#romance neutral aro culture
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aro-culture-is · 3 months ago
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aroallo culture is having to act like you don't experience sexual attraction or have sexual wants in front of other people, other aspec people included, because of how heavily they demonize sex, especially sex without romance
it feels very like. what's that meme called. the greek philosophers discussing a-spec stuff with an understanding of the inherent neutrality of sex and romance and relationships and attraction, versus folks who like...
they're in the community but they don't engage with any theory or thought? so it feels like a conversational landmine.
and in my experience, to even accept that you are aro but not ace requires getting into that theory and into those weeds, y'know?
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electraslight · 3 months ago
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You’ve said you don’t view Raine as transmasculine because it was never stated in the show, what are your thoughts on Lilith being aro/ace? And your thoughts on people putting her in romantic relationships with others
i prefer lilith being aroace as an idea a lot more than raine's agab (one, i dislike the need to specify what enby ppls agab is, but also two i feel like every enby person in media is transmasculine or afab, and i dislike that equally, so i usually either disregard a potential agab with raine, or i give them traits like a flat chest or a bulge. ive said before i view them as amab, but i have grown to dislike the need to specify so much i have decided that raine has no assigned gender because natives of the knee just plain dont do that and everyone is neutral in their culture)
i wish they were able to show it in the show more, because i feel like she is an especially rare character to be canonically asexual or aromantic, as a 40 year old woman especially. I really enjoy the idea, and i usually build on it in my mind palace version of her character (its not nsfw per se but since it involves discussion of kink ill keep it off of this blog) and totally dont project on to her at all.
as you know, my view of 'shipping' is a lot less black and white than the word usually connotes. i think as a full on romantic relationship, i couldn't see liltih with anyone, but in terms of 'shipping' i think lilith is one of the most loving characters in the show. she throws her whole self into love, honestly probably more than eda, and i can see her forming more nuanced relationships with people that can include things like sex and romance (relationship anarchy win). lilith loves her friends so much she would GLADLY kiss them on the lips. (i really dislike when people say lilith is repulsed by love. shes not in the least! shes so open about loving her friends like steve and hooty, and she loves being part of her family. lilith is so deeply loving she destroyed her life for her sister just for a chance for the two of them to be safe and together again.)
but thats an irrelevant rant. tldr; i enjoy lilith being aroace and i subscribe to the idea myself, and i think shipping her with others is fine because love comes in many forms and i think lilith, while not attracted to people romantically and sexually, has a lot of love to give in other ways.
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cr-aspec-fest · 5 months ago
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How might I approach the CR Aspec Fest prompts?
Here are some general ideas, for your perusal:
When did the character realise they were aspec? Or learn about the existence of aspec identities? Who/where from - do they have community with whom they feel safe sharing their experiences?
Did they have any 'failed' romantic or sexual relationships before they realised they were aspec? How does being aspec affect how relationships work for them?
Do they have any cultural or personal amatonormativity/allonormativity - if so, how does this affect them?
What love, safety, or joy do they find in their platonic or familial relationships? What special bonds do they have with the people around them?
Week 1 - Aro-spec: aromantic, demi/grey-romantic identities; traditionally romantic actions outside of romantic contexts; cultural expectations around relationships or marriage; platonic intimacy
Week 2 - Ace-spec: asexual, demi/grey-ace, aceflux identities; turning down or negotiating sexual propositions; intimacy (even BDSM) without sex; averse/neutral/favourable spectrum
Week 3 - Unconventional relationships: Queerplatonic relationships; polyamory; caring for children or having a family dynamic outside of romance; relationships with gods/powers/worship
Week 4 - Free week: anything! aro/ace combinations; weird and wacky crossovers or AUs; divorce; being touch-starved; avoiding sex for other reasons (repulsion from experiences; choosing celebacy; practicality); complicated or messy relationships
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threepoint14art · 7 days ago
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It's that time of the year again, fnafhs headcanons for pride month! with some design edits as well :3
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Specifics below!!! this is really long im sorry
first of all happy pride! second of all: specifics
Freddy – AFAB trans guy, aromantic and bisexual He takes a hot second to truly accept his transness, but he gets there eventually. His dysphoria is incredibly intense—he constantly feels like he’s piloting his body from the outside, distant from himself and detached from the present. When he does “come back down” and feels his body again, it’s an overwhelming and deeply unpleasant experience for a billion reasons. He feels dysphoric about being attracted to anyone, regardless of gender, and scientists should probably study the sheer force of his negativity. He hates being transgender—he accepts that he is, at some point, but he still deeply resents it. Sometimes, he just wants to be free from the constant awareness of his gender and the hyperfocus on his body that it brings.
He’s very uncomfortable with being aromantic and allosexual, and he doesn’t like talking about it. He constantly worries that people will see him as perverted just for experiencing aesthetic attraction or desire while not experiencing romantic love the way he’s “supposed to.” He often feels like he’s missing some vital piece of what makes a person whole. Love is so often described as the essence of humanity, “what makes us human” and the cornerstone of culture and storytelling. It’s portrayed as this beautiful, transcendent thing, and he thinks he must be a bad person for not experiencing it in the “right” way. Instead, all he clearly feels is the raw, messy, animalistic instinct of “oh, that person is pretty,” which feels gross and empty without the supposed emotional fullness of romance. His brain is melting under the weight of guilt and confusion—someone please help him.
He goes through all the trials and tribulations of being aro and allo alongside Cami who is in the same boat, they both sort of explore that with eachother and are in a qpr. Hurrah for the one good thing
Fred: Amab or afab that is the question, does it even matter when hes able to shapeshift in his astral form? also bi and ace
Fred’s gender is a hot mess. Does it really matter whether he was assigned male or female at birth when he can shapeshift freely in his astral form? He identifies most with "he" and "man" in a broader, detached sense—like how history books used to refer to all humanity as "man" or "he." He thought maleness was neutral and default, but realizing that being a “man” also comes with expectations and limitations has been jarring. He’s very comfortable with boyness, but once he starts noticing how even that comes with rigid roles and assumptions, discomfort sets in again.
He hasn’t experienced heavy-hitting dysphoria, mostly thanks to his ability to shape his astral form however he wants. But he still gets this persistent, uncomfortable, nagging feeling when people perceive him as Freddy—specifically, as a girl. He originally thought of himself as “the boy one” between him and Freddy, mostly because he was annoyed by femininity and how many expectations it carried. The world is built around a boy-girl binary (said like “it’s a dog-eat-dog world”), so he defaulted to boyness simply because it was “not girl.”
Fred's body reflects Freddy’s desires: more masculine by default, with a flat chest, deeper voice, and even short hair as a child, which was Freddy’s attempt to reject his own femininity. But Fred himself actually really likes long hair and would grow it out if he could. The body’s current shoulder-length hair is an awkward compromise, a silent negotiation between what Fred wants and what Freddy used to need.
He experiences a lot of dysmorphia, not just because of gender but because the body itself feels like it doesn’t belong to him. It’s shaped by Freddy’s unresolved longing, not by Fred’s true self. He’s also insecure about his asexuality, mostly because it’s tangled up in dysphoria, dysmorphia, and general corporeal disgust. He was always fine with liking women—that seemed to align with expectations—but the moment he finds a guy cute, he spirals into confusion and frustration. Nothing makes sense anymore.
Bonnie: AMAB cis guy, demiromantic and unlabeled Bonnie wrestled with attraction and labels for a bit, unsure of what everything meant or what changes he would be “expected” to make once he accepted certain identities. Eventually, he realized he doesn’t need to label anything he doesn’t want to. That moment of clarity brought him peace. He doesn’t define his attraction based on gender—it doesn’t play a significant role in how he experiences it. The only label he uses comfortably is demiromantic, because it’s about how romance happens for him specifically, not who it happens with. That distinction feels honest and grounding.
Chica: AFAB and cis girl, poly, and Bi and very proud of it! Has been out for a hot second and all of her family is very accepting of her :) her mom specially has been such a sweetheart about it and has tried to get up to date with a lot of queer stuff, also for her older daughter (i will get there.) Learning that polyamory was a real, valid thing took some adjustment. At first, it felt strange or confusing, but with support, friendship, and a burning desire to avoid unnecessary love triangles, she figured it out and embraced it fully.
Golden: AMAB nonbinary pan and poly They're going through a billion issues all of the time forever. They are going through it. Always. Forever. Realizing they were trans was like opening a door to a never-ending hallway of identity crisis and grief and horror. They always knew, deep down, that something about how they looked and existed made them miserable. But growing up under the weight of family expectations, those feelings were shoved into a dark corner and ignored. They were the “pretty boy”—that was the brand, and the brand had to be preserved.
With the help of their friends and one particularly catastrophic life event, they were finally forced to face it: they’re nonbinary. But instead of relief, this realization just made everything worse. Being nonbinary doesn’t come with clean answers or neat transitions. Their identity will always be questioned, ignored, or mocked—especially in Spanish-speaking spaces where "elle" is a punchline and being nonbinary is seen as something ridiculous or unserious. They’ll never “pass” in the traditional sense, because there’s no default mold for being nonbinary. Every moment becomes a coming out, a conversation, a correction. It’s exhausting. It’s miserable. And it’s something they have to accept even when all they want is to disappear.
Accepting their pansexuality was just another layer of the spiral. Being attracted to men made them feel like they were just “a gay guy,” which only confused things further. It wasn’t even about sexuality anymore—it was about gender. People always assumed they were gay anyway, and now it feels like they’ve just proven everyone right.
Surprisingly being poly sort of helped with that? helped cement people aren't fully correct and vindicated in their view of them and that they are more complicated than the 2D image of them that has been plastered all around.
Fox: AFAB trans guy, bi and poly
Fox has been out for a LONG time (since he was ten, to be exact). He was stealth for a long time and, thanks to early self-awareness and whatever care he could access, he never developed particularly intense dysphoria. His struggles with gender are more abstract, more about grief than disgust. Sometimes, he mourns the idea of “being a daughter” to someone, but that’s more about being an orphan than being trans so it's not relevant to day LOL
Polyamory wasn’t something he thought deeply about until he met Chica and Golden and realized, “I don’t want to choose.” So he didn’t. He’s the most chill about it, mostly because he’s open-minded and laid-back by nature. He’s also secure in his sexuality—he’s proudly bisexual, he passes easily, and he doesn’t feel like he has to overexplain anything. Sure, life will throw ten billion bricks at his head, but that’s for another day.
Joy: AFAB and bi and aroace Joy had a rough time realizing she was attracted to women. So much more is “allowed” in female friendships—physical affection, emotional intimacy, even possessiveness—that it was hard for her to separate romantic attraction from platonic closeness. On top of that, she was raised with very old-school values, which made it even harder to parse her feelings. She confused her lack of romantic and sexual attraction with “modesty” for a long time. But eventually, she figures it out—she’s bi and aroace. And though it took a thousand hoops and some heavy mental gymnastics, she gets there. 🔥
Bon: AMAB cis guy and gay
He's struggling with it. Someone help him. He grew up in a household where his gay estranged older brother was constantly berated for being "girly" and "weak" until he got into an insanely violent fight with his dad and then ran away and maybe died, or at least disappeared so thoroughly no one could really say otherwise. Now Bon carries the weight of being the “good son,” the one who stayed. His father puts a lot of pressure on him to be everything Onnie wasn’t: strong, responsible, “normal.” And Bon wants to make him proud, genuinely. After all, he’s his father, and for a while, he was the only family Bon had. This was before Malva came back from Japan and started reconnecting with them both.
Bon knows, deep down, that there’s something in him he doesn’t want to name. Something he buries, because he has bigger, louder problems to focus on—like the fact that his brother is still missing and technically a cold case. Or that he has a younger sister he barely knows and now has to help adjust to life in a completely unfamiliar country. He tells himself it’s fine. Everything’s fine, as long as he doesn’t think about it.
Enter Bonnie with a nuke.
Meg: AFAB genderfluid and pan
Saying Meg uses “any pronouns” is a bit of a simplification. The truth is, you kind of have to ask them how they’re feeling on a given day and go with whatever pronouns they tell you at the time. And you better respect that. Meg is extremely proudly trans and extremely proudly queer. They have absolutely no shame about it and they’re not afraid to throw hands if someone disrespects them (even if they’ll definitely lose the fight) It's the principle. Meg will go down swinging.
They’re loud, impulsive, and wear their identity like a badge of honor. They’ve clawed tooth and nail for the right to exist visibly, and they are not about to back down for anyone, even if it’s exhausting sometimes.
Toddy: AFAB, demiromantic and bisexual Toddy didn’t know anything about labels or identity language for a long time. She grew up without that kind of vocabulary, just following her gut and doing her best to make sense of things on her own. This is not to say her parents were against queerness or intentionally shielded her from it. In fact, quite the opposite. Both of her parents are queer themselves, and they realized after having a kid that they were both aroace. At some point they just looked at each other and said something along the lines of, "Well, we gave it a shot, but maybe let's just be buddies." So they got divorced and have remained best friends ever since. Their love is very real, even if it is not romantic or sexual, and Toddy grew up around that kind of deeply caring, untraditional relationship dynamic. Her parents deeply love her and support her in everything.
Even so, none of that helped her understand how she felt, or gave her the language to talk about her own experiences. She didn't know names or specifics or anything simply because she was unlucky. She thought she was straight because she really did like Bon, and it sort of ended there. It wasn’t until much later that she realized the way she experienced attraction, especially romantic attraction, did not match what most people seemed to describe. She only ever felt those kinds of emotions after forming a strong emotional bond with someone. That understanding made everything with Bon feel even more complicated and painful in hindsight.
Because the thing is, she really did like him. She trusted him. She let herself believe that maybe he felt something too, even if he never said it directly. But he was going through a lot of his own struggles, and in the process, he ended up stringing her along without fully realizing what he was doing. She will move on, and she knows that, but she also has every right to be hurt. That heartbreak meant something to her. Even if it did not mean the same to him, her pain is still real and valid.
Her bisexuality took a long time to figure out as well. She always understood what attraction looked like on a surface level. She could recognize when someone was beautiful, or when someone really was not, and she had no trouble acknowledging that. For years she assumed that was what attraction was supposed to be. She believed she was straight, mostly because the only person she ever truly wanted to pursue something with was Bon. And women? Well, yes, women were beautiful, but that just felt like something she could notice and appreciate without it meaning much more.
Everything shifted when she became close to a girl. Not just casual friendship, but the kind of closeness where her whole heart felt wrapped up in that bond. That was when the desire to pursue something romantic started to make sense. It was not sudden or dramatic, just a gentle and very certain kind of clarity. Things clicked into place. She could finally look back on her own history and see the patterns for what they really were. She finally understood herself better, and that was such a gift. She deserves that clarity. I love her.
Mai: AFAB demigirl and sapphic
Mai tends not to talk about pronouns or gender much. It’s not that she is hiding it—she just doesn’t see the point. She looks like a girl, people treat her like one, and it doesn’t bother her that much. Compared to her sibling, who’s so much louder and more secure in their transness, she feels like she barely counts. Like she’s “not trans enough” to make it worth mentioning. There’s a quiet guilt there, like she's letting someone down, or occupying a space she doesn't fully deserve. It makes her feel as though her gender should be insignificant, barely even a blip, but somehow it still lingers in the back of her mind more than she thinks it should. So she just lets people assume, unless they ask directly, and even then it comes out kind of mumbled.
But when it comes to her sexuality, there’s no such hesitation. She loves women and feminine people with the kind of loud, celebratory joy that takes up space. She's sapphic and proud, and being able to say that out loud feels incredible. She absolutely adores femininity, both in others and in herself, and she couldn’t be happier to know that queerness is a part of that. That part of her has never been a source of shame. Only joy. She uses sapphic instead of lesbian a lot of the time, but it's mostly just a slight preference for the sapphic flag more than anything. Has no qualms being refered to as a lesbian and will also be proud of it.
Puppet: AFAB, canonically nonbinary and pan!! wow!! Puppet uses all pronouns and genuinely means it. None of them feel especially gendered in their head—“he,” “she,” “they,” “it”—they all drift across the surface of their identity without quite settling in. They’re neutral enough. Interchangeable, almost. Like labels for a thing that doesn’t need labeling. But while the pronouns themselves don’t bother them, being perceived as a girl does. Not just in a vague sense, but with a kind of deep, gnawing wrongness.
Feminine presentation—dresses, makeup, dainty postures, even being called “pretty” in a certain tone—makes their skin crawl. It’s not about dysphoria in the traditional way, or some kind of inner conflict. It’s simpler and more violent than that. It feels wrong, like being dressed in someone else’s skin. Like being wrapped in something that doesn’t belong to them, something they never agreed to.
And yet, Puppet rarely corrects people. Not because they don’t care, but because caring takes energy. They process the world in such a flat, disjointed way that most things don’t really register as worth responding to. Emotions pass through them like wind through a hollow space—barely touching the sides. Feeling nothing is their default state. So when someone clearly percieves him as a girl and it makes them twitch, or gives them a weird, nauseating pulse in their chest, they don’t always push it away. They notice it. And sometimes, that’s enough. She’ll let it happen just to prove to herself that she's still here. That something can still get under his skin. And that not everything is this blind search for something to spark a curiosity strong enough to wind him up into being a functional human being
In that sense, being misgendered or misunderstood becomes a strange kind of stimulation. Not good, not validating, but real. It’s a sensation. It’s input. And when the world is usually just noise and static, even discomfort feels like something worth keeping.
Despite that, there’s a very quiet comfort in masculinity. They never name it, never try to define it, but there’s a certain ease in moving through the world when presenting as a boy. Not really being one, that also feels wrong (though LESS wrong than being a girl), but presenting in a masculine way instead of chasing androginy feels good. It doesn’t feel like the truth, necessarily, but it sits better in their bones. It doesn’t itch.
Their relationship with pansexuality is equally stripped of sentiment. It’s not about pride or identity—it’s just a fact. Everyone is equally viable and equally irrelevant. Attraction doesn’t hinge on gender, because gender doesn’t really exist in their internal framework the way it does for other people. Puppet flirts for fun. For control. Sometimes just for noise. Love, though? That’s a fantasy, at least for him it is. It's something other people get to have. They’ve already resigned themselves to the idea that love is a closed door, and they’re on the outside. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe it’s easier that way.
Puppet isn’t cold, but they exist in a kind of emotional grayscale. They aren’t searching for meaning, not really. They’re just trying to stay awake in a life that feels endlessly gray. And if being seen wrong gives them a flicker of something—rage, disgust, discomfort—they’ll take it.
It’s not the healthiest way to live. But it’s what they’ve got. Sure hope the magic thing you're researching helps you fix yourself man (it doesn't)
Onnie: AMAB, agender gay and poly. Onnie used to think there was something wrong with him—rotten-in-the-bones kind of wrong. Before it was Onnie, it was just “the oldest son.” And being the oldest son in that house meant something very specific. It meant being strong. Stoic. Unshakeable. A man, with all the weight and cruelty that word carried when spoken from their father’s mouth.
But he was soft-spoken. He cried too easily. He was always covered in bruises from the latest beating at school. And worse than that, they liked things that weren’t hard or manly—music, art, singing in his room, writing lyrics in the margins of his notebooks. That softness made him a target. The kids at school saw it first, and their father second. And both used queerness like a slur, a weapon, something they threw at him until it cracked open everything inside.
And the worst part was that they weren’t wrong.
His queerness was like a cut that got infected and doused in alcohol over and over again. People weren’t wrong in how they perceived him, he was gay, and he was weird, and disconnected from masculinity. So therefore, in their eyes, all the violence that came his way was inherently justified. It had to be. That was the only way it made any sense.
It doesn't mean he stopped fighting. Even if they were right, even if he was built to be disgusting and reprehensible, he would fight back. Crawl and cry and scream his way through survival. Cling to life however he could, even if that life was “wrong.” He began to harbor a deep, seething hatred for everything considered “right.” Fantasies bloomed inside him, twisted and violent, full of moral rot—scenes where he was the one in power, he was the one dealing out cruelty, he was the one who got to hurt a kid for whatever arbitrary reason, the same way people hurt him. Surely this won't reflect on him later. (Lie.)
When he eventually found Deuz and the others, something changed. Bit by bit, the edges of that survival-sharpened armor dulled. They were loud and queer and fearless, and somehow still strong. And Onnie, for the first time, felt like they were allowed to try being real—not the version he’d failed to be, but the version they might’ve become if the world hadn’t tried to crush it out of them.
Being gay wasn’t a death sentence. Being queer didn’t mean you were a cockroach, something wrong to be stomped out. Accepting it didn’t have to feel like a burning needle cauterizing every nerve of vulnerability he had hidden in spiral notebooks filled with gut-spilling lyrics. He could be gay and be at the top of the food chain. He could be gay and be feared. He could be gay and be alive.
As for gender—Onnie unraveled that knot on its own. They were a gifted kid (surprising everyone), the kind who buried themself in books and lyrics and late-night English forums just to get away from reality. That’s how it first saw pronouns like it/its, how others used them with pride or curiosity or joy. He tucked the idea away for years, too afraid to touch it, until one day he wasn’t.
“It” doesn't quite work in Spanish, though. So their workaround was simple and sort of rough around the edges: using their name in place of pronouns, and ending gendered words in -e, mirroring the neutral grammar of elle but shaping it into something distinct enough to be different. Something personal. Something right. It didn’t need to make sense to anyone else. It made sense to them. It felt like them.
Now, Onnie is louder than ever. Proud. Ridiculously gay. Dramatically poly. He wears his hair long like a curtain and a banner both—because it’s what he always wanted, and because it makes him feel like he belongs to himself again. There’s still a lingering fear of weakness. He flinches from it. Circles it warily. But that fear doesn’t own him anymore.
He isn’t ashamed of what he is. He doesn’t flinch when people see him clearly. If anything, it dares people to look harder. Somewhere in there, there’s some kind of vindication. In living a “wrong” life. In being a “bad” person. In being gay and queer and violent and claiming back every bit of the fire that once burned him.
He is the violent asshole now. The one you can’t get rid of even if you fight back with all your strength.
And somewhere, deep inside, the bloody child who hid poems in a shoebox under the bed and thought dying might be easier than existing—knows that he survived. That they survived. That it is real now. That it is free.
Onyx: AFAB trans guy, bi, ace, and polyamorous Onyx got kicked out the same night he came out as trans to his father. One second, he had a roof over his head, a bedroom with posters on the walls and socks on the floor. The next, he was standing outside with nothing to his name after screaming his lungs out against the only person he had ever had. He started living with Deuz and he was infinitely grateful for that, but the wound never really healed.
Even so, he never once reconsidered. Not his name, not his identity, not even in the darkest, most vulnerable nights where grief and abandonment tried to creep in through the cracks. Losing his only family over his gender didn’t make him doubt it, it made him realize just how deep it ran. The kind of truth you’d give everything for. He’s proud of who he is, even if it cost him everything.
Sexuality, on the other hand, always felt like a side quest. He grew up assuming bisexuality was just the neutral setting everyone had before picking favorites—like everyone started bi and then “chose” straight or gay. And as for sex? He thought people were making it up. It sounded more like exaggerated performance art than something real people actually enjoyed. So in his mind, he figured he must be the default. Turns out, not quite. Realizing he was ace didn’t come with grief or weight. It came with a laugh and a shrug, like discovering a plot twist in a story he thought he knew. Compared to gender, sexuality was just background noise; quiet, uncomplicated, and kind of funny in retrospect.
Deuz: AMAB bigender, gay and poly Deuz has always known who she is. Her gender never confused her, never felt like a blurry, shifting shadow. She is both man and woman at once, not in halves but in whole. And she never had to fight for that clarity. Her mother was always in her corner, she was specially encouraged to follow what her heart said due to the fact that his mom (and his late dad) were both trans! She grew up in a house where queerness wasn’t radical, it was something normal that he had to live out, never shutting himself out to comform to a broken unjust world.
Still, even in that love, Deuz crafted herself into something deliberately strong. She holds herself to a standard of masculinity—not because it comforts her, but because it anchors her. Because she’s built her life around protecting others, around being the one who stands tall when everything else falls apart.
Sexuality wise, that one defenitelly took longer. Realizing she was gay felt harder to digest, stranger to hold. Not because it was wrong, but because it didn’t fit into the framework she’d built of who she thought she should be. Because for a while figuring out attraction was just some weird background noise she had no time to tune into, not with the self imposed weight of being "the leader" of his little ragtag group of misfits. It took a few years to untangle it all, but she got there. And now, she claims it with the same confidence she carries everything else.
Maggie: AFAB Trans guy, bi, and poly Maggie’s gender was a slow burn. Not an explosion, not a revelation, more like a quiet echo that took years to reach him. He tried on a dozen labels before settling into “man.” And it was a long and arduous process because he couldn't understand how he could be a man but have no physical dysphoria, no hunger for surgery, no desire to change his name or to be different. His wish was to be treated different while being the same. And some part of him thought it was cheap. Specially when comparing his thought process to the way Onyx experienced his own gender, being obnoxiously masculine to feel right, a part of him felt like it'd be unfair of him to call himself a "man" when he knows "normal" binary trans people like Onyx or Deuz's mom who have changed and strived to look a certain way when he does not. He likes femininity, likes wearing pretty things, so there had to be some weird answer in between.
It took time to unlearn the idea that trans men had to be masc to be valid. That you needed to suffer to qualify. But he did unlearn it. And now he’s solid in himself. Quietly, casually, stubbornly sure. He gets misgendered constantly, he presents in a way where he just looks like a girl, but it stopped stinging as much. Doesn’t mean he’s not exhausted by it. Just that he knows who he is, even if others don’t.
Sexuality-wise, he’s chill about being bi. Almost amused by it. There’s something inherently funny to him about the whole thing, especially the fact that Deuz was his first love. Something about bisexual falling for the bigender. it's sort of funny in a stupid way, bi^2 Being poly is also chill, he thinks is sort of metal, do whatever you want forever and let no one stop you love everyone who you love never be shackled type stuff
Abby: AMAB demigirl and pansexual Abby has known she was trans for a while now, she came out to her parents when she was little and her parents were surprisingly totally fine with hit, her mom in particular was very happy (and weirdly emotional) about it, and told her she should always live her life with freedom, and be the individual she wants to be no matter what anyone says, lol i wonder why (Abby your poor mother.)
At first, She thought she was a binary trans girl, and she lived in that label for a good while—until it started to feel just a little too narrow, a little too tight in places she didn’t know how to name. Eventually, she landed on demigirl, and it clicked really nicely. Not one or the other, but something that belonged to her, exactly how she needed it to.
She lived in an English-speaking country for a bit when she was younger, which is where she first found a deep attachment to it/its pronouns. Something about the neutral confidence of them just made sense. They felt clean. Solid. Unapologetic. Inhuman in a way that was comforting instead of antagonizing. But in Spanish, where it/its doesn’t quite translate, she swaps them out for elle. She doesn’t mind—it’s all part of her language, her expression, her shape. Passing makes it easier, too. She’s not closeted, just... not often asked. If someone does ask, she’ll tell them without hesitation. But most people don’t. People see what they see and assume they have the answer.
As for being pansexual, that label was love at first sight. She just always assumed that was how it worked. “Why would gender affect who you like? Aren’t you supposed to like the person?????” Finding out that wasn’t how most people worked made her latch onto the label all the more tightly. She loves it, She likes that she gets to love without borders.
Lily: AFAB cis girl and aroace Lily adores being aroace. She treats it like a prized identity, like a shiny badge she gets to flash around with pride and joy. She wears bracelets with the flag colors, has stickers all over her stuff, and Felix helped her make matching pins and buttons that say “no thanks” in big friendly letters. She thinks it’s all very cute and her parents know of it and are fine with it :) whatever makes her happy. (if you're wondering why I didn't give her that in the sprite edit, i FORGOT and it was a chore to put all of the images in pairs without tumblr freaking out so you have to imagine it because im NOT going through that again)
She figured herself out when she was just meeting the funtimes! they were all talking about sexuality since it was a big factor on why they were bothered and outcasts, and she kinda realized she did not get it at all!!! She sort of shyly admitted she did not understand and eventually they all helped her learn what being aroace was and finding a label :) yay friendship
Felix: AMAB cis gay guy Pride should be dedicated to this guy
Felix is so loud about being gay. It’s his favorite thing about himself. He’ll tell you within the first five minutes of meeting him, will introduce himself with “Hi, I’m Felix and I’m very gay,” and probably has at least one rainbow item on him at all times because why not!! why not be fiercly proud of being who you are. Why would anyone have shame. If anyone should have shame it's the unjust broken world that deemed it as something "wrong" to be happy.
He figured himself out very early on, and when he came out when he was like 12 it wasn’t cute or easy. His dad freaked out, stormed out, and just... never came back. No apology. No explanation aside from the usual nonsense that sounded like a game of broken telephone. Just left. It could’ve broken him or made him feel ashamed, but instead, it ignited something. He got angry. Furious. And that fury turned outward at bigots, at injustice, at every system and person who made life harder for kids like him. This guy thinks he can end homophobia on his own with his little teenager hands.
Fede: AFAB trans guy and bi Fede is out at school, but not at home. It’s a weird limbo: in public, he tries his hardest to correct people, speaks with as much confidence as he can muster, but without a male uniform, without hormones, without passing, it never really lands the way he wants. People still call him “she,” and worse, they look at him and see something else entirely.
He cut his hair short and thought it would help, that maybe that would be the moment he started looking like himself—but all he sees in the mirror is how much he still looks “like a girl.” Feminine. Soft in the wrong ways. He’s incredibly dysphoric and barely managing to stay afloat under the weight of it. At school, kids used to call him a lesbian before he even came out, and that specific kind of misgendering—being shoved into an identity that isn’t his at all—cuts deeper than most things. It’s humiliation and erasure in one.
He tries to laugh it off. Tries to be chill. He models himself after Felix—this blazing, joyful, unshakeably gay guy who somehow made pride into something loud and beautiful. In Fede’s head, Felix is the ideal. If he could just be like that, maybe this wouldn’t hurt so much. But it does hurt. And pretending it doesn’t is exhausting. There's a quiet, venomous kind of anger that sits heavy in his chest, not directed at anyone in particular, just at everything.
Still, he can’t help the creeping resentment he sometimes feels toward Abby. She passes effortlessly. People see her the way she wants to be seen, and even if he knows it’s not her fault, even if he loves her as a friend, it gnaws at him. And that makes him feel worse, because what kind of friend gets bitter over someone else's joy?
Being bi only makes things messier. He hates how dating Felix, an openly gay guy, makes people side-eye them like they're either beards or confused. ("You know he’s gay, right?” people whisper to him, like they’re doing him a favor.) And if he shows attraction to girls, it’s the same: people assume he's just a butch lesbian in denial. Every direction he turns, someone’s misreading him, mislabeling him, painting over who he actually is. His identity feels like it’s constantly being erased and re-written by other people.
So instead, he plays it cool. Acts like he doesn’t care. Laughs when people joke. Pretends he’s above it all. But underneath the performance, Fede is furious and sad and so tired. He just wants to be seen. As a boy. As himself. And not have to explain why that’s not a contradiction.
Malva: AFAB cis girl, aromantic and lesbian
Amor o admiración but with aromantic piano-playing girls. Her and Joy both being aromantic... Bon’s Amor o admiración plotline, but flipped in an aromantic way for his sister!
It’s hard to discern platonic, romantic, admiration — and even more so under a feminine upbringing, where you’re allowed to be far more affectionate and caring with each other. Romance being imposed upon girls is also a factor, and something that Malva has imposed on her by her family. It's a silent expectation: to be a girlfriend, a bride, a wife, a mother, a grandmother.
It’s a pressure she has to ponder. As a kid, she would rebel against it, but as she gets older, she sees how everyone else lets go of that childish rejection and falls into "like"... and she! never! does!
She doesn’t understand romantic attraction or what the big deal is with it. She feels an intense platonic bond with Loon. She had never considered “dating”. because what would even change? beyond gross kissing? She hates the phrasing of “more than friends,” as if her friends were somehow less than, when they matter so much to her. And she does actually get really sad when Loon starts dating, because of that same idea that it’s “more than.” and that she doesn't matter as much anymore.
She has the same issue with realizing she’s a lesbian, since again — girls are allowed to be more close — but no yeah: pretty girl around and she’s stupid. Realizing the idea of kissing a girl doesn’t sound as bad as a boy 👍 actually sounds kinda nice 👍 (The heteronormative future that was always imposed on her and that she rejected — without actually wondering if there was any other option she could like. HETERONORMATIVITY IS HARD. SHE’S A TEEN)
Loon: AMAB bigender, bisexual and poly
This guy is so negative I have no clue what the hell is wrong with him. He’s bigender and absolutely hates it. Not because he doesn’t believe in it, not because he doubts it, but because it’s him, and that alone makes it feel cursed. He’s known for a long time, even as a kid, but knowing didn’t come with clarity or peace, just confusion, shame, and this creeping sense of being fundamentally broken.
He’s out to his parents, and they’re surprisingly okay about it. Supportive, even. That doesn’t stop him from cringing at his own existence. When he came out to Malva, he did it over text when she was already in another country, and he couldn’t bear the idea of saying it out loud. He’s mortified by most of his existence — his gender included, but definitely not limited to it.
To survive, he has built an uneasy system. He pretends to be a cis girl He’s built a system of survival: pretend to be a cis girl online, pretend to be a cis boy in real life. A half-life on both ends. It's his attempt to “balance” being both a guy and a girl at the same time, without ever actually asking anyone to see him for who he is. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't really work. His pronouns and how he wants to be referred to change almost daily, but to be truly comfortable, she’d have to communicate, to actually tell people what she needs. And that’s... not happening. Loon is a creature engineered out of guilt, shame, and fear of burdening others. So he suffers quietly and smiles through it, convincing himself that no one needs to know.
That whole online system of his bit him in the ass eventually, because he and Owynn met online! and dated online! so he was a cis girl to owynn until he moved and HAD to come clean about it, but the guilt of having lied still claws at him, specially because he could tell Owynn was weirded out by it (at first he thought it was him thinking she was gross, but she later learns that Owynn is just very easily freaked out by men and the whole lying thing scared him for a bit before he realized it was harmless). It adds another layer to the already overwhelming pile of self-loathing and fear that he carries every day.
She feels like she’s not feminine enough to look like a girl, like any attempt at femininity just makes her look like she’s in some kind of costume. But she’s not masculine enough to be perceived as a guy either. Not confidently, not assertively. Instead, she’s convinced she’s this weird, ugly little thing stuck in between, a cosmic joke of a person who fails no matter what direction she reaches toward. Her self-image is so fractured that even the smallest attempts at self-expression feel fake or doomed to backfire. Growing out and dyeing her hair helped a bit. But it’s fragile, and fleeting, and too easily shattered by a bad glance or a wrong pronoun because people cannot read his mind.
Sexuality wise, he’s a little more relaxed. A little. His dad is also bi and he was raised in a house that encouraged openness, so in theory, this is the one area that isn’t supposed to be riddled with shame. And it sort of works; unlike gender, bi-ness doesn’t come with an assigned costume. He doesn’t have to look a certain way to be valid, and that gives him a second of peace. But even then, there’s the loopback. The echo chamber of gender dysphoria wraps itself around his sexuality. When he’s dating a guy, he panics: “Do I look like a gay guy? But I’m not a guy all the time.” When he’s dating a girl, the thoughts shift: “Do I look like a straight girl? That’s not right either.” Everything cycles back to gender. Fly high
And then there’s polyamory. And oh man that one blindsided him. He wasn’t expecting it, he thought he was monogamous, thought he had to be, that the very idea of having feelings for more than one person was a betrayal. So when he developed feelings for someone else while dating Owynn, he had a complete meltdown. Not a soft, quiet crisis. A full-on spiral. He felt gross, disgusting, like a cheater, even though he hadn’t done anything. Because society has this whole purity script — the “one and only” narrative. “True love means there’s only one.” And even though his parents are chill and pretty nonjudgmental, the world is not. Polyamory still gets side-eyed, still gets called selfish or slutty or immature. He internalized all of that without even realizing it. He had a horrible time about it before he got reassured that feelings alone don’t make you disloyal, and that polyamory is valid as long as everyone involved knows what’s going on and communicates clearly. That wanting more than one person doesn’t make you greedy or dirty. That it’s not shameful to want connection — especially when you’re honest about it.
And hearing that? It helped. She started to believe it. She started to let herself feel things again. And it worked. For once, something worked. She’s still anxious and self-critical and probably always will be, but she figured something out. That matters.
Owynn: AFAB trans guy, demiromantic, asexual, pansexual and poly
Dear god have less things
I'm gonna get into a lot of heavy stuff with him?? because sadly it shaped him and how he lives and exists?? so feel free to skip this one i sound insane.
His gender is the worst thing that has ever happened to him. He deeply resents being born a girl and absolutely despises being perceived as one. He is fully stealth at school and completely closeted at home. He accomplished this by lying—outrageously and thoroughly. He is already quite neglected at home (his mother works constantly, and his father is completely unhinged), and since he was already used to handling most of his paperwork alone, he was told to enroll in school by himself. So he made the completely unhinged decision to forge his birth certificate and every single official document so that he would be recognized as male under the name Owynn.
He works incredibly hard in school and keeps his grades high, not out of ambition, but so his parents never get contacted for anything. He always writes his name in pencil on tests and assignments so he can erase it and rewrite his deadname if his father decides to snoop through his belongings. He is running on pure survival instincts. He is absolutely terrified that if his father ever found out the truth, he would be in real danger—he is half certain he would be killed. But that fear barely registers, because he has reached a point where he just does not care anymore. He is completely unhinged and has accepted it, it's not like he doesn't "almost die" every so often either, his dad loves to lose his shit at random inconsecuential stuff.
A lot of his hatred for being a girl comes directly from trauma. His father is deranged and believes women are fragile, delicate things, while simultaneously beating him mercilessly for anything that could be considered promiscuous or outside the rigid standards he has for women. All of it is supposedly “to protect her” or “to teach her a lesson,” but it is all complete nonsense. His father is just violent and deranged.
On top of that, Owynn has had a horrific track record with cis men specifically because he was perceived as a girl. From a terrifyingly young age, he learned that men—especially older boys and adult men—were not safe. They looked at him like he was something to consume. Like something already theirs. As a child, he was already bullied for being visibly Indigenous, and it did not stop there. He was also fetishized and sexualized for that exact reason. One boy in his class confessed his “love” to him every day, never taking a no for an answer because "girls just like to play hard", and adults encouraged him to keep on trying because it was "cute" and "boys will be boys". This just kept happening until he got tired of being rejected and just forced himself onto Owynn. If you ever see that I draw him with a part of his tongue missing, it is because that same boy bit it off. Fun. They were """""dating""""" for a bit before Owynn tried to kill himself and switched schools. ("pia what the fuck he did what" im not gonna expand on that we are moving on.)
He has always been sexualized for being a girl. He was always told to be soft, fragile, and passive. He was expected to be a doll—pretty, silent, and compliant. He was never treated like a full person, only like an object to be looked at, possessed, or corrected. Every interaction he had while being perceived as a girl made him feel profoundly disgusting, like his body wasn’t his own and his identity was just a costume others kept forcing onto him. He's scared of men. He fears what they see when they look at him. He fears what they assume, what they feel entitled to, what they might do with that entitlement. Even now, when he’s perceived as a boy, he can feel it lingering—the possibility that one day someone will look too close, notice the wrong shape in his silhouette, and decide to make him pay for it. The fear of men is so deeply embedded in his nervous system that even being near them can make his stomach clench and his skin crawl. He cannot relax around them. He cannot trust them. They’ve only ever taught him that love is violence, attention is danger, and being noticed is a curse. All of that horrible track record has led him to believe he’s not really “deserving” of being called trans. In his head, he’s not a real trans guy—he’s just a stupid, broken girl trying to escape her own weakness by pretending to be a boy. And that doesn’t feel valid. He tells himself that hating girlhood isn’t the same as being a boy. That being a boy out of pure spite, out of trauma, out of survival, isn’t the same as the way “real” trans people come to understand themselves. In his worst moments, he feels like a walking stereotype—the “traumatized girl” transphobes point to in their strawman arguments to claim that trans men are just confused, abused, or brainwashed women. He knows he’s not that, and he knows his circumstances don’t make his identity any less real. He knows that, objectively, survival is not shameful and that his happiness matters more than anyone’s expectations or purity tests. But even knowing all of that, he still feels like that. And the guilt eats at him anyway. It gnaws at the parts of him that wanted to be proud. It claws at the parts that once believed he could be something better. It sits in his chest like a bruise that never fades.
Regarding his sexuality, Owynn identified as aromantic and asexual for a long time, and he was honestly very happy with that label. He was content being alone forever. In his eyes, people are cruel, opportunistic, and dangerous. Getting close to someone would only mean giving them the chance to hurt, use, or manipulate him. Romantic relationships seemed even worse, because they included sex, physical closeness, and all the expectations that came with those things.
Then Loon appeared, and it was like being metaphorically shot in the back of the head repeatedly. Owynn started dating her online mostly as a joke—partly to mess around, but mostly to cement the idea that he was aromantic and asexual. He figured, “Why should I care? She’s a girl (he thought), and therefore not inherently as dangerous as men.” It felt like a low-risk experiment. If he broke it off, it was not like she would try to kill him or anything. And besides, she was Japanese and lived on the other side of the planet anyways.
Surprise! They actually got close. And he started experiencing romantic feelings for the first time in his life, and he absolutely hated it, he freaked out about it in the comfort of his own privacy while continuing to act normal around Loon and trying to pretend like he didn't want to scream. He could not bring himself to end things, because the moment he realized what he felt, he became deeply attached. And with a little bit of time, it felt kind of nice. Online, he had control. No one could see his body language or make him uncomfortable with touch. He got to feel like a normal, lovesick teenager for once in his life. Oops. Loon moved to his country. And she was not biologically a girl. And everything got absolutely horrible again.
Loon, in tears, explained that she was sorry, ashamed, and completely mortified. She had not lied for fun, it was just a stupid gender thing and she was trying so hard to be comfortable with existing. Owynn was already far too attached to walk away, and he accepted the situation, mostly by justifying it to himself. After all, he was also lying to Loon by pretending to be a cis guy. But going from what they had before to the chaotic mess they were suddenly thrown into was disorienting and intense. That whole transition is another topic entirely.
As for his asexuality, he is extremely sex-repulsed. He hates the very idea of it and feels deeply uncomfortable with most of the typical things people in relationships are expected to do—like kissing, cuddling or even using petnames. Whenever he tries to think about any of those things he gets sick, remembers being called pretty and exotic and being sexualized and kissed and touched and he despises it and despises himself for being so "dramatic" about stupid stuff. These reactions have left him feeling insecure about his relationship and how “worthy” he is of it. He often feels more like a glorified best friend than a boyfriend because his brain will not allow him to engage in even the smallest of intimate gestures without panicking or feeling physically sick. And yet, the worst part is not the panic itself—it’s the shame that comes after. The part of him that whispers, "No one will stay if you can't give them what they want."
His pansexuality came into the picture much later, during his relationship with Loon. He originally liked the idea of being straight, because it helped validate his identity as a man. But once he realized Loon was uncomfortable with that framing because of her gender, he had the realization that gender did not matter to him at all. He had no preference, no attraction based on gender and the pansexual label fit well into that.
He’s not really the biggest fan of not being straight. It’s not about internalized homophobia exactly, it's more that people have always assumed he wasn’t straight just by looking at him. He’s seen as androgynous and constantly read as “gay” in some way, mostly because of his long hair. And it drives him insane. He’s not feminine at all, but no one seems to care. The hair alone is enough to push people into making assumptions, as if that’s all it takes. And the worst part is he can’t even cut it to prove them wrong. It’s not just hair—it holds deep cultural and spiritual meaning. It’s part of his identity as an Indigenous person, something sacred and personal, and reducing it to an aesthetic or a "feminine" trait feels like a slap in the face.
So when people see his hair and assume he’s queer or soft or feminine, and then they turn out to be right in any way, like yes, he could theoretically date a guy—it feels cheap. It feels like he’s handing them a win. Like he’s accidentally confirming the stereotype that gay men are feminine, that long hair equals queerness, and that his culture is just another quirky visual choice. It frustrates him endlessly, because he is a binary trans man. He is masculine. His gender is not up for debate, and neither is the reason he keeps his hair long. But the world insists on misunderstanding both. He hates that people collapse gender, sexuality, culture, and presentation into one judgmental glance. And even though their assumptions aren’t entirely wrong, they’re not right either. Not in the way they think they are. His identity is complex and sacred and deliberate. And being right about one part of it doesn’t make the rest of their shallow readings any less painful.
And FINALLY, just like with Loon, realizing he was polyamorous was a devastating moment for him. He was raised with intense messages about purity, and after his father found out about boys forcing themselves on him, he was beaten and labeled a “whore.” Because of that, Owynn struggles immensely with emotional openness. Showing affection makes him feel dirty, even in a monogamous relationship. So when he started developing feelings for someone else, his brain immediately spiraled into shame, painting him as dirty, greedy and promiscuous. Inmediatly hammering the idea that he's a "bad boyfriend who doesnt deserve the relationship he's in" way more. And he sort of spirals about it for a hot second before Loon tells him his own struggles with the exact same thing and they sort of calm eachother down.
Red: Amab nonbinary unlabeled and poly
IM FREE FROM OWYNN THANK YOU GOD Anyway, okay. Red. This guy is my oc sorry I have so much to say about him. She's real to me.
This guy is also having a horrible time with gender and has absolutely no clue how to cope with it. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to explain some lore here, because it’s actually relevant. Fly high, past me, you got far enough without explaining the Red Lore Rework™ but it’s time to get sent to super hell.
Red is a shadow. Straight up. But he has a body. This is because his brother (host????? past him??? something.) is the little sibling of the main villain. You know? Victoria? Sorry if you don’t know, I truly just make things up.
The point is, Victoria has a younger sibling (alumna con una flor), and she used her sibling as a lab rat to figure out how to make shadows corporeal when they don’t share a body with another person since that’s basically her entire goal. Her sibling, Betta (and yes, that’s a stupid name, leave her alone, she’s nonbinary) has a horrible time just existing. They live alone with Victoria, who is completely unhinged, and they try to drown that reality out by burying themselves in video games, especially Pokémon.
Just like Fred represents Freddy’s desire to be more masculine, Red represents Betta’s longing to be AMAB — to be seen as anything other than a girl, ever. That feeling of “being nonbinary would be easier if I were born a guy.” The quiet resentment of how people water down nonbinary identities to “woman lite.” Betta clung to the idea that it would just be easier if they had been assigned male. They played Pokémon nonstop and fixated on the character Red — wishing, obsessively, to be like him.
Red is not a natural shadow. He wasn’t formed organically and he didn’t even fully form. He was lab-made — a fragile construction of disjointed memories, yearning, and discarded feelings, not fully tethered to Betta. They look nothing alike. Red is literally modeled after Trainer Red, and represents all those AMAB-leaning desires. He is more “manly”, taller, broader shoulders, deep voice. He vaguely remembers being a girl, but now lives in a body that’s unmistakably male. And it feels completely wrong.
He isn’t a real person. He’s a manifestation of someone else’s past desires. He remembers being Betta. But he is profoundly angry about his existence and how alien his body feels. He’s too tall, too broad, too masculine ; it’s the opposite end of the same discomfort. Because true neutrality is impossible to achieve. He uses all pronouns and absolutely hates being perceived as any gender. He would prefer not to be perceived at all. Please do not look at him. Please do not assign him anything. Just leave it blank.
He tends to lean into more feminine things. Long skirts. Pretty little accessories. Anything that helps soften the feeling of dissonance, even a little. And it helps, just barely, but not enough.
She hates her body. She hates her voice. She tried growing her hair out in the hope that looking more feminine would help, but it didn’t. It fixed nothing. So now they try to disconnect completely from self-image. They avoid mirrors. They move through the world in first person and try not to think about what they look like. It works, until it doesn’t. The derealization and dysmorphia build up, and sometimes they look in the mirror and panic because the body looking back doesn’t feel real or correct. And then they spiral.
She hates her body. She hates her voice. She tried growing her hair out in the hope that looking more feminine would help, but it didn’t. It fixed nothing. So now they try to disconnect completely from self-image. They avoid mirrors. They don’t like seeing photos of themselves. They wear oversized clothes not to express anything but to disappear inside of them. They move through the world in first person and try not to think about what they look like. They dissociate so intensely from the idea of “having a body” that it’s almost like they don’t. But it only works until it doesn’t.
The derealization hits like a wave. Sometimes it starts small, looking in the mirror and seeing someone too tall, too angular, someone whose jaw is wrong and whose posture is unfamiliar. Sometimes it’s worse: sometimes they look in the mirror and feel like the reflection is someone else entirely. A character he was sickly fixated with staring back at her with wide eyes. Like their body has been swapped out when they weren’t paying attention. Like they’ve been skinned and sewn into someone else’s proportions.
And it’s not just mirrors. Sometimes it’s their voice. Sometimes it’s the weight of their arms. The breadth of their shoulders. A glimpse of their silhouette in a window. The feeling of movement when they walk. Their own footsteps sound too heavy. Sometimes it’s the crushing, inexplicable sense that they’re not real. Like they’re inhabiting a puppet. Like someone pressed “randomize” on a character creator and gave them a skin that glitches every time they try to look directly at it.
They’ll panic, sometimes quietly, sometimes not. They’ll shut down in the middle of a sentence. They’ll dig their nails into their palms or press their face against something cold just to anchor themself back into a sense of being real. They try to ground themself with textures, with sound, with the familiarity of someone else’s voice. But it doesn’t always work. And when it doesn’t, they’ll try to sleep it off. Like maybe when they wake up, their body will finally make sense. Like maybe the mirror will reflect someone they recognize.
So they stop thinking about it. They pretend not to notice the way their hips don’t move like they remember. They pretend the echo in their voice isn’t unfamiliar. They ignore how their skin feels too tight in some places and too loose in others. They dissociate because it is safer than confronting the idea that they are a failed experiment, that even when built to “look right,” they still ended up wrong.
They also hate that they can tell Owynn is subconsciously wary — maybe even scared — whenever Red “looks too much like a man.” It stings. And it’s not helped by the fact that Red is emotionally unstable, prone to yelling, and has a tendency to hit things when overwhelmed. They know it doesn’t help. They just don’t know how else to be.
Sexuality-wise, things are a lot less awful. Red does not feel the need to label attraction at all. They will like whoever they like, for whatever reason. It is not something they want to analyze or define. Who cares? Attraction is not a thesis. It just is.
And hilariously enough (or at least it's hilarious to me) THIS beautiful weird creature that eats ants for fun, was actually the one responsible for giving both Owynn and Loon the worst polyamory awakening of their lives. And Red, completely unbothered, just looked at them and said, “Polyamory is a thing.” Flat. Casual. No fanfare. As if it was the most obvious thing in the world. They genuinely don’t understand why that would be considered bad. They know it’s looked down upon, sure, but so is being queer. So is everything about their existence. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Tony: AMAB cis guy and gay
This cat might have a billion issues, but sexuality isn’t one of them. B) He doesn’t really talk about it all that much, mostly because his boyfriend is still closeted to a lot of people, but Tony himself is completely confident in being fully gay, and he’s genuinely okay with it. He’s never questioned it. It’s one of the few things about himself that feels steady.
His parents would probably be fine with it too, if he ever told them. He hasn’t come out to them. Not out of fear of rejection, but more because he just doesn’t talk to his parents about anything at all. He's a secretive little guy.
Eak: AFAB trans guy and gay
He doesn’t pass all that well, and that’s okay. He’s not really trying to. He’s not fully out to most people anyway. He’s out to his close friend group (Tony, Leon, and Cami) and he’s out to his stepsisters (Chica and Robin) Beyond that, though he's sort of "closeted", or rather he's doing whatever he wants and not explaining himself to people that don't mean anything to him; so he doesn't care to correct or explain who he is to nobodies who he doesn't care about.
He tried to tell his mom, but it didn’t really end well. Not in a huge fight or being disowned or anything, just in that quiet, heavy way where she simply doesn’t get it at all. He really tried to tell her, tried to explain everything, and kept trying for a long time. They’d get into arguments about it, not ugly ones. She's just a tired person and confused and they all usually just end with her saying, “Yeah, yeah. Okay. Do whatever you want.” Eak and his mom are, and always have been, very close. He’s got younger siblings and a connected family, but his mom is his mom. She’s the one who dressed and fed him and helped him with everything she could while he was growing up. He’s been there to help her through rough moments too, probably more than he should’ve as a child. She was cheated on and left by her husband, eventually divorced, and it all hit her like a truck. It hurts to see her so depressed ever since. So of course he wants to hold out for her. Hold out for it to just click. But it doesn’t.
She’s an important piece of his life, and an important point of connection to his culture. They’re both very proud of their culture and heritage. She’s been the one to teach him dances, take him to places, and share so much with him. But the feminine parts of it—the ones she tries to keep him in—just aren’t him, even though she’s so important to him. To her, it often comes across as if he’s rejecting his culture. And dyeing his hair gray doesn’t help—she sees it as an Americanization of himself. (Looking more like a bald eagle than a golden eagle, because the animal sizes are different and his build fits the stereotypical bald eagle guy more than a golden one. ((Eak should stop calling himself an eagle if he doesn’t want me to make it important in this zoo of an AU.)))
So he gave up and just does whatever he wants, wears what he wants, and stopped trying to explain it, because “she just won’t ever get it.” He loves her to death, and she does love him too . it’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s that she’s confused; and he’s frustrated. He’s easily irritated and gets impatient about it, because to him, he’s just a guy, and “it really should be as simple as that.”
He’s grateful that his boyfriend is gay. It’s this huge, validating thing, being with someone who sees him as a guy, who wants him as a guy, who isn’t just making an exception or dancing around labels. That means everything to Eak. But it also makes something bitter bubble up sometimes. Because Tony is just... a guy. A big, well-formed guy. Broad shoulders, deep voice, tall. Confident without trying. And Eak envies the hell out of it. Not in a soft wistful way , more in a “I want to snap his neck a little bit” way. But nothing too serious. They have bigger issues as a couple anyway, trust.
He’s very sure he’s gay. He’s never questioned that, not even once. But it also makes things harder. Because people don’t see him as a guy, which means they see his relationship as straight. And that makes him feel sick sometimes. He hates that he can’t be visibly queer on his own terms. That his love, even when it’s real and mutual and right, is flattened out into something it isn’t. But whatever he's just gonna have to toughen up and stop thinking about what others think.
Cami: AFAB nonbinary, aromantic and bisexual
Cami is nonbinary, but very feminine—elegant and soft in a way that feels intentional, deliberate. Flowing like those Roman marble statues of women in togas: it’s a representation of a woman, but it’s stone. Solid. Untouchable. More like a representation of artistic femininity rather than an actual woman, a reflection without needing to match the image behind it.
She really likes the aromantic label. Fully, clearly, no half-measures. The word fits like something she didn’t know she needed. Friendship has always meant the world to her. Despite the ups and downs that came with knowing ther friends for so long, those friendships are her lifeline. Her roots.
It was hard for her to realize she was aromantic at first, because she never felt strongly about the idea of someone being romantically attracted to her. She never thought much about romantic attraction at all. She’s always seen herself as an outsider to everything—every norm, every expected emotion, every behavior. So why would this “universal feeling” of romantic love be any different? Of course it didn’t click. Of course it didn’t settle right.
Her attitude was always a kind of shrug: “I don’t mind doing this stuff. I can. I just don’t feel any real sort of way about it.” There’s a blankness there, an absence—but not in a hollow way. It’s not sad. It’s just… not there. Still, sharing that emptiness with someone else, finding connection in the quiet and the lack, that does make her feel good. Nice weird queer platonic romantic feeling…
She wishes platonic gestures carried more weight for people. Wishes the world didn’t reserve so many soft, tender things for romance only. Why does a kiss have to mean love? Why can’t it just mean care? Why can’t you hold hands and sleep in the same bed and say “I love you” without being shoved into a box for it? Cami fnafhs says: kiss your friends now.
As for her bisexuality, she understands attraction—she feels it. But like Freddy, she feels conflicted and ashamed about being aromantic and allosexual at the same time. There’s something about it that makes her feel impure. Wrong. Dirty. And that guilt is rooted deep, also influenced by the Christian beliefs she was raised with. Men and women are supposed to do things only when they’re married. Anything sexual is supposed to be a reflection of true love, holy, pure and meaningful. Lust is a sin. And Cami feels no love, only want. Only body. Only sin. That imbalance makes her feel twisted and broken, like something inside her is rotten.
But at least freddy gets it! and it's nice to not be alone :)
Leon: AMAB bigender and pansexual
This guy. Is actually so stupid and annoying and bad. Her journey through gender was not any soul searching or an inherent feeling of being wrong. He kinda was just vaguely jealous of Eak.
LOL this stupid snake learned about transness with Eak, went "oh unfair that's really cool!!! I wanna be cool too that's really unique!!!" and started using she pronouns just for that reason. And then after a while she went "hold on............. This has some kick to it." and only THEN actually started thinking about labels and understanding himself and whatever it's actually so stupid and very funny to me.
Anyways they don't mind being seen as masculine or feminine, they don't have that much dysphoria but they do have a lot of EUPHORIA when people switch up pronouns or when he tries on different clothes with different gender expressions. She's vibing. Very loudly out to people because he's like that, but he hasn't told his parents (mostly because they're NEVER there and when they ARE they just treat him like a poor martyr instead than like a kid with thoughts and a life besides being deaf)
Sexuality wise they never cared about gender and mostly just longed for a fairytail romance!! very cheesy and very sappy!!! since gender was irrelevant and not a big part of any daydream of romance she decided that pansexual fit pretty well.
Spring: AMAB, bigender and unlabeled.
Spring. My sweet child. My beautiful creature. I love you. I’m so sorry for sticking you in hell my bad
Spring has really bad self-esteem. He tries not to show it, and tries even harder not to think about it—because he owes it to his parents to be happy. Because he feels like a walking cliché. Scarred people don’t have to be insecure. Burn survivors don’t have to be insecure. There are millions of videos and posts and speeches by people who have found peace, who have learned to love themselves despite whatever their body carries—no matter how large, no matter how visible. They all seem to rise above it, to wear their survival like armor. And all of them feel like they’re better than him for it.
So feeling bad about it feels cheap. It feels selfish. Unjustified. Like she should have learned to live with her face by now. Like he should be over it. She should be grateful—grateful just to be alive, to be moving forward, to still have breath. But she can’t seem to live at peace with her body. Not really. Not yet.
Her face looks a lot like her father’s. A man who died too young, who had a son too soon. It's like a ghostly distortion of his image. A perversion. A reminder of everything he’s lost and everything he’ll never have again. He carries it around like a brand. Like a mask that doesn’t fit.
No matter how many times he or others say he’s more than his scars, the world still stares. Still wonders. Still flinches. They theorize, pity, compliment too loudly, or just fall silent. His scars always enter the room before he does. And then—on top of all that—he wants to be more of a freak. Dress stranger. Look weirder. Be a man, but also not. Be something else entirely.
He’s already broad, already tall, already carrying his father’s heavy features across his face. Trying to reach for femininity in the middle of all that feels like a joke at best—and an insult at worst.
He is not cute.
So much of his gender identity circles around that one, painfully simple phrase. She is not cute. He doesn’t want to be a woman. He doesn’t want to be a man, either. But there’s a raw, shameful ache to just be cute. Just a little. Just once. To be something soft and small and kind to look at.
But that word—cute—feels miles away. To be associated with femininity is to be associated with beauty, with gentleness. And he’s not that. No matter how many times people insist he’s not ugly, no matter how kindly they speak, he’s still half-blind, half-deaf, visibly scarred. And he hates it. Hates how he hates it. Hates that he can’t just shut up and get over it, because he doesn’t have time to cry when he’s got bills due and two kids to feed and jobs to work.
He didn’t get time to think about gender or sexuality until everything crashed into him like a truck—when he was 24 and had his first crush on a coworker. He’d never had the space before. No time, no energy to spend on silly things like labels or romance. He had more important things to worry about. He still does.
Because he’s the oldest. He’s the responsible one. The one who holds everything together with shaking hands.
And once he realized he liked men, he was horrified—not because of internalized homophobia. No, he’s not afraid of being queer. His siblings are queer, loud and proud, and it’s not like he has any parents left to disappoint. But the idea that anyone could be attracted to him feels like a cruel joke. Romance doesn’t excite her—it depresses her. The very thought of someone seeing her as desirable just makes her want to curl in on herself.
It’d already be hard enough if she were straight. But being queer on top of everything else makes her feel like some kind of sideshow. Some freakish creature to be pitied or marveled at. It’s easier not to think about it. What good would come of it, anyway? It's not like anyone would love this face.
And that thought—that deep, festering self-loathing—is what led her into the gender stuff.
She hated her face, yes, but it wasn’t just about that. It was the ache underneath—the desperate, wordless craving to be something small. To be soft. To be pretty. To be her—even just a little. And that cracked her open.
She figured out the label and the pronouns really quickly, thanks to Deuz. And the second it clicked into place, it also made her feel like shit. Because she can’t afford this. She can’t afford to be thinking about gender right now. She’s 24. She’s an adult. An adult who works too much and sleeps too little and whose parents died at 26. She’s almost outlived them. And what does she have to show for it? A grown man, dressing up like something he’s not, wearing the face he stole from a dead man. It’s humiliating.
She’ll come around eventually. She’ll find her peace. But right now, she’s overwhelmed. She’s ashamed. She’s exhausted. She’s juggling too much and holding it all rough overworked hands. but just give her like a second to breath he's doing his best
and at last: My horrible beloathed cishets
"Why are they even here?" I hear you. But I want to talk about them. They're gender nonconforming and they deserve a little U_U.
These two are Vincent (cis guy) and Robin (cis girl).
Vincent is Owynn’s older brother. He grew up under the same cruel man, the same suffocating rules. He’s deeply depressed and strange in the kind of way that doesn’t make sense to most people, but this isn't really about that. He’s Indigenous, and when he was little, he had long hair. Their mother loved it. But their father hated it. He chopped it off without asking. Every time it started to grow, it would be cut again. Because Vincent was a boy. Because boys should look like boys. Because looking beautiful, looking soft, was dangerous. His father didn’t care about where the hair came from or what it meant. Vincent inherited something ancient, something sacred, and it was taken from him like it was nothing.
He grieved that hair. He mourned it with a quiet pain that never left. He felt unreal without it, like he was living outside of his own body. It made him sad for most of his life, and for a long time he didn’t even realize why. On some level, he knew it had to do with his beliefs, with his ancestry, with the way Indigenous boys are forced to mold themselves into someone else's idea of masculinity. But eventually, another layer unraveled. He realized that he didn’t just grieve his culture. He grieved the softness. He grieved the femininity. He wanted to wear skirts. He wanted to feel cute. He wanted to be seen in a way that was tender and lovely and a little bit shiny. He wanted rings and earrings and delicate fabrics, things that glittered or flowed. And he hated himself for it.
Because that would mean the hair had made him feminine. That he wasn’t normal. That there was something deeply wrong. So he buried it. Deep.
And then there's Robin.
Robin is Chica’s older sister. She was always the weird one, the kid no one could quite place. She hated her body in a way that wasn’t easy to explain. Not the way people say in passing. She hated her chest. She hated her voice. She hated the way her hair fell around her shoulders and made her feel like a doll someone else had dressed. She hated how her clothes stuck to her, how her chest bounced when she ran, how people looked at her without asking. She hated the way she existed.
She was quiet about it, mostly. She created whole worlds with her art. She designed clothing like armor, pieces that wrapped around faceless figures that she wished she could become. She disappeared into that work. That was how she survived. She had one friend, for a while, but it fell apart in a bitter and sad way. (And they’re coworkers now LOL.)
She wanted to look masculine. Not to be a boy, not really. She didn’t want to be not a girl. She wanted to be a girl in her own way. One she could live with. One that didn’t hurt. One that didn’t feel like being flayed alive every time she caught her reflection. She wanted to get rid of her chest. She wanted to flatten her curves. She wanted silence where her body screamed.
She told her mother about it, more than once. That she hated how she looked. That she just wanted out. That she wanted to feel normal. And her mother told her she loved her. No matter what. That she would always be her child. That it was okay to feel how she felt.
So Robin tried to believe that. She poured herself into her designs, into the details, into the textures. She stopped thinking about herself. But eventually, the passion that once protected her started to feel like a prison. It became another thing that demanded too much of her. She burnt out. Her joy vanished. And suddenly, she was alone with the ache she had always tried to escape.
She got top surgery. It saved her life. It made her feel like she could breathe for the first time in years. She called her mom, excited, wanting to share the joy. And her mother, gently, asked if she was still her daughter. Asked if she was her son now, or if she liked girls, or if she had anything she might want to tell her in general. Because no matter what she would love her.
And that’s what broke her heart. Because it meant that her mother hadn’t really understood her. Not truly. It meant all those times she had explained it wasn’t about gender, all those hours she spent trying to put it into words, didn’t land. Her mother still saw it as queerness. Still saw it as identity. As transition. As something that could be named.
She is jealous of Chica. Jealous of Eak for being able to put any of their stuff into words and not just having some unexplainable bug in their head that no one else seemed to have. She feels like a glitch, like a girl who got corrupted somewhere along the way and can’t be patched. Something broken that no one has a word for.
Robin didn’t want a new label. She wanted to be left alone in her girlhood. She wanted to be a girl, just not the kind people expected. She didn’t want to be othered. She didn’t want to have to be trans or nonbinary or gay to explain or justify the way she felt.
She wanted it to be okay that she was just a girl.
But no one gets it. She knows that now. And so she lives. She lets her facial hair grow. She wears what she wants. She doesn’t apologize for it. She doesn’t soften herself for others anymore. But she still longs, sometimes, to be understood. To be seen without someone trying to solve her.
Vincent is the only one she lets see her without any armor on. And he’s the same way. He only dresses how he likes when they’re alone. The world is too loud otherwise.
They met at some awful college party. They were both drunk. They were both heavy with all the thoughts they weren’t allowed to say. And then, somehow, the wall cracked.
"I wish I had your long hair." "I wish I could cut mine short like yours." "I want your clothes." "Me too." "I wish I had your chest." "I wish I could give it to you." "I'm still a man." "And I'm still a woman."
And that was it. They got instantly attached and became a pair of codependent freaks. It was a relief. It was finally someone who got it. No disclaimers. No corrections. Just that rare kind of knowing that makes the world less unbearable.
Robin still wishes she was queer sometimes. Just so she could explain herself. So she could belong. But she’s not. And she’s made her peace with that, too.
But sometimes, she thinks about love. And it hurts. Because she doesn't believe there's a place for her in it. She doesn’t think she can be someone’s girlfriend. She can’t be someone’s wife. Men want softness, womanhood in the traditional sense. Queer men sometimes treat her like an outlier, not quite a girl, not quite not. And straight men just see her as wrong. She feels like she doesn't belong anywhere. And she's tired of fighting that.
She watches Vincent sometimes and feels a sharp, wordless ache. Not envy, not quite. But something close. A longing to be wanted like that. A longing to fit.
Vincent, on the other hand, thought he had love already figured out. He has a girlfriend he loves. He hadn't really told her about his liking of dresses or anything of the sort yet, still feeling a bit too raw and embarrassed about it. But he loved her, and she did too. Then he got hit by ten million bricks and the bricks are called his fuckass coworker.
Spring was supposed to be just a friend. But Vincent started to find him beautiful. He started to like him? He had the peace of mind that crushes don't really mean anything inherently harmful if you don't act upon them. He had that talk with Leti a while ago, where she was scared that finding actors or anyone else attractive would be unfaithful (mostly based on how her ex was insane), and he assured her he didn't see it that way. People can be attractive, people can be beautiful. It's not a sin to notice it or to even have harmless fantasies about it as long as everyone talks about it like an adult.
He didn't inherently feel bad about the crush itself. If it had been anyone else it would be pretty harmless. But it made him feel sick. He felt like the biggest asshole possible for even thinking that. Because Spring was a pretty guy. He was a good friend and they had gotten close as friends. But he liked him. And if he liked him that way, then everyone had always been right about him. All the headaches and aches of trying not to resent being labeled something he was sure he wasn't were coming back to stick to his skin like needles. His father was always right about him. Everyone was.
When Spring came out with her gender stuff, he also tried to be honest and come clean about having "a stupid crush" on both Vincent and Leti, and apologized thoroughly for thinking that way about a happy couple he had no business bothering. Vincent also was honest, and he came apart. He tried to explain, poorly, how his head was a mess and that he also sort of felt that way (not in a way he could reciprocate) but that he was frankly feeling horrible. That he was also having a horrible time with this entire sexuality stuff and that he was as lost as Spring.
They decided to be adults, call Leti on the phone, and try to talk about what the hell was happening. Only to find out that she also had been having a weird "unattainable" crush on Spring that made her feel all dirty and gross like a cheater. They talked. All of them sort of struggled with labeling stuff happening to them, and came to the conclusion that labels are tools. They're only useful if they make you feel safe. If he didn’t feel queer, that was okay. She wasn’t offended by being seen as something other than a man. Because she isn’t one. Just like some nonbinary people say, “no matter who likes me, it's inherently gay.” Spring figured it worked the other way too. You can be straight even if you like me, because I am something different than your own gender. You can hold on to the piece of mind that keeps you upright.
It actually brings Spring some weird peace of mind, that two people of opposite binary genders could see her as "an other" and "an opposite" gender-wise. It helped her feel a little less awful about gender.
But yeah they’re weird. They’re messy. They don’t always make sense. But they fit.
I can’t believe Vincent gets two whole girlfriends but Robin gets sent to mega hell. I'm sorry girl. I hope you get to date someone soon. Why do you look like you want to strangle him. Robin don’t do it. That’s your best friend. Robin oh god she can’t hear me she has airpods.
AND THATS IT!!!!!! THANKS FOR READING AND SO SORRY FOR SUBMITTING YOU TO ALL OF THAT. LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE FOR ME TO LOSE MY MIND AGAIN
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recipromantic-culture-is · 1 year ago
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Recipromantic culture is being strictly romance neutral aro before someone you're close with asks you out, and the feelings(tm) hit like a truck
(I literally just figured this shit out today, I'm still having heart palpitations)
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charmixpower · 2 years ago
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Here's a version with no bg! And under the cut imma explain my hcs!
Going in order;
Tecna: Nonbinary Flag cape, Aro and Ace belt clips, Transfeminine pin, and Autism pin
Tecna doesn't really care about figuring out what her exact gender is because that doesn't affect the happiness she experiences in her life so she uses the macro label of Nonbinary and Transfeminine, and was very happy simply socially transitioning to being more feminine
She uses She/He/They pronouns, and doesn't actually care which one people use for her. Since magic is a very female dominant field and because she's transfeminine most people just assume she only uses she/her and she honestly doesn't care enough to correct them
She experiences no type of attraction, but isn't repulsed. She's completely neutral but is very much interested in not participating
She's very autistic. She experiences shut downs, takes things very literally, is like aggressive sincere bc not doing that never occurred to her, can't read others emotions to save her life—people on Zenith usually keep to themselves and have a extremely straightforward culture that very autism friendly so Tecna never noticed she was different until she left
Aisha: Lesbian Flag, Demi aro ace pin, and that's the Pride flag in her bag
Aisha is exclusively attracted to women and only experiences attraction after knowing someone well. Additionally, Demi people have different amounts of time for when they feel attraction and for Aisha they have to be at the very least good friends before any attraction can develop
Musa: Bisexual jacket
Musa is bisexual with a preference for men. She figured out she was bisexual after watching the world's shittest romance movie and wished she was dating both of them. She is the most disastrous of bisexuals. Shes never had a crush on a normal person, that or it's another straight girl. Someone pray for her
Bloom: Omni Flag cape, and Autism pin
Had a friend describe Omni as being between Pan and Bi, where gender plays a role but not as big and it really fitt the way I see Bloom so here. Bloom experiences attraction differently based on gender but has no preference, so she's Omni. I genuinely think Bloom would like and use micro labels, she just comes off to me as a "I need to find the perfect word to decide my experience" girlie
Bloom's autism is all in the sensitivity, being easily overwhelmed and wanting to process in a safe place, complete lack of understanding of danger, and huge special interest baybeee. Also her complete inability to express empathy without filtering it though her own life experience but eventually she figures out how to just express empathy and sympathy without doing that XD
Stella: Pan dress, ADHD purse, and three different Polyamorous pins
Stella is pan "because I can't deny any gender a shot" - Stella of Solaria
That's a real quote. She told me herself. Yeah but she's pan and thinks everyone is hot. Shes our Combined type ADHD queen. Bow down. The three different polyam pins are because there're two different popular flags, the most common really ugly one and the redesign so I used both so people would understand and the new polyam symbol. If she and Brandon met someone they wanted to date there would be no question if they tried to bring them into the relationship. Only when
Flora: Bisexual dress, Pride belt, and Pride earrings
Flora is bisexual with a preference for women. She has no clue she was into men for a little while, primarily bc she finds femininity the most attractive so it was until she saw a gnc guy and couldn't stop staring that she realized she was bisexual. The distinguished bisexual to Musa's utter disaster
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aspecpplarebeautiful · 2 years ago
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Hey, i read a lot of romance and I date a lot, at college I made out with boys at parties, and now I'm two-ish months into dating someone. But I think I'm just chasing a feeling that I'm never going to have, and I broke up with someone last summer because of it and I think I'm going to have to do it again and it's just shit, why can't I have that feeling. I don't even know what it is that I'm missing, but it just feels empty, like I'm going through the motions. But maybe it's my antidepressants... Or maybe the guy just isn't right...
I don't know how to be, and I thought I would have figured it out by now. How can I just string this guy along knowing this
We live in a culture that tells us that we're supposed to want certain things to be happy, including a long term romantic relationship. The reality is is that people are actually really diverse and while romantic relationships may be important to some people, others may be more neutral or even find romantic relationships aren't right for them at all.
It is possible that this could be related to your anti-depressants, another possibility is that either this relationship or romantic relationships in general aren't right for you. No matter what someone's identity is or ends up being though, I always think it's a good idea to explore who you are and try and ask yourself honestly and with an open mind, what would make you happy? What way of living your life do you think will make you feel fulfilled?
It won't hurt to explore aromanticism and aro identities just to see if that is what's going on with you. Some aromantic spectrum people do like to date and make out, but don't like serious long term relationships (this is common for freyromantic people for example, which is someone who experiences romantic attraction, but only to people they don't know well and it fades or disappears as they get to know the person they're attracted to).
If you're not sure where to start, I recommend Arocalypse (an aro themed forum with a good faq), and Carnival of Aros as a good place to find aro people talking about their experiences being aro.
If you are concerned about your antidepressants that is something to talk to your doctor about, but be careful that sometimes medical professionals (including mental health professionals) aren't always informed about aromanticism and it's still not uncommon to mistake that on its own as a symptom of a larger problem. Pay attention if there's other concerning symptoms, like feelings of numbness, lack of energy, etc. If the antidepressants are the issue, it likely won't manifest as disinterest in romantic relationships and nothing else.
Hopefully this is helpful and gives you some direction, but feel free to ask if you have more questions or want more information on anything.
All the best, Anon! Good luck!
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flock-from-the-void · 1 year ago
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1, 2, 7 for the pride asks?
Hi Frost!!
The question is from this pride ask game :3 Answers below the cut because it ended up being a bit long...
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I'll answer for And May the Moon Shine Over Your Ways and my depressed child Tiv
1. What's your oc's gender identity? What's their relationship to their gender?
Ok, so it's important to mention that this world does not really care about gender, especially Noverentos, Tiv's culture. Everyone dresses sorta similarly, there's little pressure for having kids (this is an elvish culture, so very long lifespans, and the inheritance works a bit differently than irl), the language does not differentiate between genders etc. More important thing is for example social status or place of birth
In English and Polish - two languages which use gendered pronouns - I usually describe him as he/him, purely for convenience. I'm still deciding whether or not I should just switch everyone's pronouns to something gender neutral (describing everyone with the same pronoun is a bit problematic hah)
Having said all that, there are still people who would identify as what we call man or woman. I think in our terms Tiv would be a demiboy. Still, in-universe gender expression is very limited (at least in noverentos culture) and now that I think about it, trying to be masculine or feminine would be more rare than the opposite hah
2. What's your oc's orientation? (Romantic/sexual/platonic alterous ect) Do they have opinions about it?
Oh, he's definitely aroace. He released it when he was really young and made his peace with it. Firstly it was pretty hard for him because his family is kind of unusual for noverentos – his parents stayed with each other for reaaalllyyy long time and had three children together, when typically a couple would have one child and separate after their coming-of-age ceremony. Tiv wanted to be like his parents - he loved the peace of home, the soft familiar love and warmth of parents' hugs. Now he gave up on the dream
Of course, one can make a family being aroace! Tiv just haven't got that idea yet, haha. Noverentos culture separates the romance and the friendship with a wide red line, making it hard for aros and aces who want to make a family. Aplatonics have it even worse tbh, because generally friendships are regarded as more important
I struggle so much to not end up infodumping here
7. Is there something that could cause your oc to question their identity? What?
I think just seeing a family with parents who are friends or just friends living together would send him into a spiral of thoughts. He would both question his aroaceness and his definitions of romance and friendship. Everything in shambles. I would go more into that but that's a spoiler territory I fear...
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majachee · 1 year ago
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Your cat ocs are like the embodiment of the warrior cats artist fan style /pos
Anyways whats the sillys name and why does yew look like roadkill ❤️❤️❤️👀
1. THANK YOU WAAAAHHHHH
2. OH. OH I THINK YOU MISUNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT... Yew is his name! His story takes place during the late Viking age, so his Norse name would be Ýr!
Everyone uses he/him for him in-universe, but personality-wise he wouldn't care what pronouns you use for him. So, if you want to give him neo-pronouns, go right ahead! I think it's charming! So yeah, bevause you've opened my eyes to the potential misreading, his pronouns are now "any + yew/ýr"
As for his scars? Grins...
Yew was born in a feral cat colony, one where the males (instead of being completely chased off like in IRL cat colonies) are instead trained to ward off predators like dogs, birds of prey, lynxes, wolverines, etc. They're also taught to go after aggressive, non-colony tomcats who pose a threat to the colony's kittens. Despite such expectations, they do have the choice of leaving the colony completely and going rogue.
The mollies also engage with fighting, but theyre more focused on hunting and going after trespassing cats/invaders trying to take territory. Both mollies and toms go after aggressive cats threatening their kittens, btw. The combat is all based more on defense than offense.
It's a very matriarchal colony, with a very rigid way of life and proud military values surrounding strength and honor. Mature toms and mollies without scars are seen as lackadaisical, as scars are seen as proof of victory rather than defeat or injury. If you're an outsider wanting to join, you have to win in a fight against several of the colony's strongest fighters. Not a fight to the death, mind you, all claws are sheathed during the initiation trials.
Killing is looked down upon and seen as a desperate, last resort when necessary, as all life has meaning. Maiming is definitely on the table for them, though.
Some of Yew's scars come from his life in this colony; he's very protective of his family, especially his mother, younger half-brother, and sickly cousin. The rest of the scars came from when the colony was attacked by a larger, merciless group of cats who partook in ritualistic war and bloodshed. This larger group are the main antagonists btw.
... they're also cannibals. But I won't talk about that in-depth here because that is a very touchy subject for some.
Yew was moderately lucky, despite his serious injuries, as he managed to get his cousin and brother out mostly unscatched. Now the three of them wander as nomads, going where life takes them and trying to live peacefully. They avoid other groups of cats like the plague, no need to be needlessly aggressive when you have no territory to defend and all that.
So Yew's scars come from a history of throwing himself into danger to protect his loved ones, he is a very skilled fighter due to his size (very large, even for an early norwegian forest cat-esque breed) and is very, very protective. His half-brother is also a kitten for most of the story, so he takes on a stereotypically motherly role when raising his brother.
Despite his battle scars and the culture he grew up in, he is a soft pacifist at heart and doesnt agree with some of the colony's ideals. Example being he doesn't see scars as an indicator of someone's physical strength, he views them quite neutrally actually. He doesn't like to make judgements based on appearance, rather one's actions. Spoiler but he ends up finding himself adopted into a found family-esque colony and lives the rest of his days as a kitsitter alongside his cousin and bro. He's aro/ace too btw, so he has no interest in romance. He'd absolutely adopt every orphan he sees though!
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pinkrangerv · 9 months ago
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hey, I don't mean to be rude by pointing this out at all, but I wanted to say that I do think you are responding in a very combative way to OP of the gay supernatural post. I think what you brought up is simply a different headcanon than they have, and that's why they asked you, neutrally, to make your own post. they probably don't want to get notifications for your different headcanon on a post they created. it isn't something they can necessarily control, but isn't so unreasonable or uncommon that they want to avoid it. it doesn't seem like a big deal to ask you to make their own post where you could just reference what they said when you discuss your own thing and spare them the notes on their post. you're acting like they were originally mad at you or that they have some biases against aro/ace identities and for what it's worth I just don't think that's true about OP.
The thing is, 'make your own post' culture is inherently not neutral.
When you post something on Tumblr--or Facebook, or Twitter, or Myspace, or pick your site--you are legally considered to have done the same thing as if you published it in the New York Times. It can be criminal evidence. It can be used against you at a job if your name is attached.
And, the important part: Other people get to reply to it.
If you only want some kinds of replies, you can ask nicely in the post for that (although no one is obliged to listen to you). You can turn off reblogs altogether. But that's it.
Telling people to 'make your own post' is saying that you can make your own rules about how someone interacts with a post, and other people have to obey you. No, they don't. Demanding other people treat you as some kind of rule-maker is ridiculous; you have no right to demand other people go beyond basic civility for you.
Consider the post I made. It didn't even disagree with OP; I was discussing extra parts of the interpretation, and those parts do actually need consideration in gay-specific headcanons! Because OP wasn't wrong about subtext often involving aromantic and asexual implications, so yeah, that is part of the conversation. It's not 'my headcanon'--OP flat-out said that Dean slept with women but never wanted romance, and Castiel never had either. That's aro\ace TEXT. That's been there since E1. If you're not discussing that, you're no longer discussing SPN, you're talking about another show.
OP didn't say that they didn't want to talk about canon, though. OP didn't say that there were rules. And for that matter--what rule did I break? You're generous in saying they only wanted discussions about gay people...but let's consider this reblog claiming that, apparently, to say that me pointing out asexual text--CANON TEXT, mind you, everything I quoted IS LITERALLY IN THE SHOW--is homophobic.
I can't help but note that this didn't break OP's rules.
There was nothing 'neutral' about what OP said. And there's a hell of a lot of aphobia implied in OP deciding my post, specifically, breaks their rules. Yeah, I'm being snarky--but why wouldn't I be? OP demands I follow rules that never were stated, and then complains when I don't, and this rule seems to mysteriously only apply to a discussion of aro\aceness.
Tl;dr: This is the reblog site. If you're complaining that someone's reblogging you, that's rude, and kind of stupid--this is the REBLOGGING site, not the 'we all post in silence and never interact' site. OP did that with some pretty damn aphobic implications. Yeah, I get to be snarky when someone's rude.
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aro-culture-is · 5 months ago
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aro culture is realising that some alloromantic people simply aren't cut out for romance, and that's an absolutely morally neutral thing that they shouldn't be shamed or pitied for
(knew this already objectively but it hit me all over again as i saw a friend experience it first hand)
big agree
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romance-evil-aro · 3 years ago
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Romance neutral aro culture is being bored when you see romance in movies. Like, I’m not disgusted or repulsed by it, I’m just bored.
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shiutsu · 3 years ago
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I swear I'll get a bunch of offended idiots, but I feel like it's needed.
Don't read if you can easily get offended (cw:aphobia,s3x mention,misantrophy,abus3)
I'll go from a representation to..bitching about the aro community,cuz it needs to be said.
Kinda ironic how aspecs are mad that media portrays the specific part of community,but not the one that actually feels the attraction. But they themselves shit at or forget about those repulsed ones and make spaces for the positive ones instead.
This may be stroke 4 you,so I'll say it in the specific cases:
Attraction positive aros/aces are getting mad that media is portraying only the repulsed ones and they act like those aspecs don't exist and they themselves make aspec content for their attraction type and they ignore those repulsed ones.
I mean,they could go like "Oh I'm ace and I don't like s3x, but there are other aces that like it, be neutral to it and are indifferent to it",but since it's quite a new term,it's gonna take years that this world is going to properly learn it.
Like.. Why are you complaining about being called nonhuman?.. Aren't nonhumans cool and more interesting than humans?.. Why do you think that everyone is this "Uwu I love this overpopulated fucked up world,let me be nice to everyone,even those who deserve to get slapped and fall off a bridge"? Are you saying that anger issues or anything like that doesn't exist?..
While aces are kinda starting to be better in this (Like they're being more accepting),aros are horrible in this.
They spread the "y'all must love platonically" bullshit and get offended when someone's repulsed and they're being arophobic towards them and they think that they're gonna change or anything.
Like bruh,have you heard of fake friends or domestic abuse?.. That that friend you always loved platonically can dump you and then treat you horribly?Do you know that family members can be disgusting fucks? Have you forgotten that something like physical,emotional or verbal abuse exists when it comes to family??
And if someone tells you they don't love, you go"we all can love"?.. And then basically say that you can feel some attraction to a stranger that has only like..told you a direction?
And if someone is selfshipper/ficto and they tell you they feel an attraction to someone who doesn't exist, you get offended and then start to shit at them cuz according to yourself, everyone needs to be attracted to this fucked up species?
Why does it bother you?.. Are you jealous that fictos can't get into abusive situations with their f/os while you can with your '"""interests"""""?.. Hmmm???
Like again,what is this community??.. Why don't aces have problem with accepting other types of attraction and that someone is into it and someone isn't.?..
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anthonynotgreen · 4 years ago
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Just realized another aro thing in DMs
Tumblr media Tumblr media
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questioning arospec culture is knowing you're romance-neutral, but not actually being able to pin down if you're strictly aromantic, or greyromantic, or cupioromantic, and being so freaking confused over it.
<3
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questioning-culture-is · 3 years ago
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Questioning culture is loving romance and not minding sexual references in cartoons or my imagination.
But then I see a couple just hugging in real life and I'm like, ugh.
Maybe I'm romantic repulsed or something...
.
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