#than deal with aphobes

[northlight14]

A PSA to non asexual arcane fans!

Ok with the recent announcement that Viktor is asexual, as an asexual myself who has Viktor as their favourite character, I wanna get some shit out the way. There’s a good chance I’m gonna stop interacting with the arcane fandom because of this announcement because every time I’ve seen a character be confirmed asexual there’s always just this influx of acephobia and misinformation which makes it impossible for me to even interact with the fandom and feel safe. So throwing this at y’all and then we’ll see what happens. However, I do not speak for the whole of the asexual community so some aces may disagree with me and that’s ok, as long as y’all aren’t rude we can have a discussion (or you can just scroll or block me, whatevs🤷)

Asexual and aromantic are not the same thing. This is something the creator clearly doesn’t know since he used Viktor’s asexuality as a rebuttal against Jayvik which makes zero fucking sense but sure. So asexuals can still date and aromantics and still have sex. Some like myself are both but that’s not always the case

“Asexuality is a spectrum! Some asexuals still have sex!” is not the good excuse you think it is to depict asexuals in sexually explicit situations. Every time I see this paired with this excuse, the character is very obviously just made to be allosexual in the fanwork. Either stick to sexualising the allosexual characters or do your research on sex neutral/favourable asexuals and represent them properly. Otherwise what you’re doing is no different to writing a fic where a canonically lesbian character has sex with a man

“Asexuality is a spectrum! People can be demisexual or greysexual!” If the character was demisexual or greysexual, the creator would have said. But they didn’t. They said they were asexual. You changing the label doesn’t make you inclusive, it makes you acephobic

Viktor being announced as asexual only after the show was released and it being in rebuttal to a gay ship where the writer clearly doesn’t know what it actually means to be asexual isn’t the win for ace representation some might first think. Asexuals deserve explicit representation by people who bother to learn how to represent us properly

Having the only asexual character also be the character who’s storyline focuses on disability, something that people already infantalise also isn’t the win people might try and make it out to be. Disabled people are frequently denied sexuality and it is part of the way they are infantalised in western society. So having Viktor be disabled and also be the only asexual character feels a bit iffy to me. Obviously there are disabled people who are ace and I don’t want to diminish that experience either. And there would be ways to explore that in a more nuanced way but that’s not what happened. And frankly it would be so easy to avoid this by just having more than one ace character so it doesn’t feel like a trait exclusive to disabled people but sure go off I guess

A lot of you only give a shit about QPR’s (queer platonic relationships) so that you have an excuse to ship aromantic characters. Granted, I’m so in favour of QPR Jayvik because their relationship explicitly goes beyond what we consider standard for a platonic relationship, even if it’s canonically not romantic. But I’m bringing this up anyway because a lot of the time in fandom and society in general, QPR’s are seen as a way to make the aromantic character more “palatable” to the allo’s and shippers. And as someone in a QPR, that idea honestly feels both insulting but is also so damaging to the aro community as a whole. Loveless aromantics exist. Some aromantics who do feel other forms of love still don’t want a QPR. Some like myself were/are indifferent and some like my partner really want one. Not all of us are the same

Might’ve missed some stuff but yeah. Any acephobia will be deleted but I’m happy to have civil conversations and answer questions. Ultimately I just want a fandom to actually listen to ace people for once but I know that won’t happen. Still, I wanted to at least say my peace

[cosmicredcadet]

A character looks straight into the camera and says "I'm not interested in romance" and people will still say "No, it's not confirmed they're aromantic!!!" "They could change their mind!!!" "it's a challenge for them to overcome!!!" "They'll have character development that makes them fall in love"

It's like they are given the most blatant answer to a character romantic orientation and they actively ignore it. all the while all it takes is subtext for people to speak as if it is fact for a character to be any other sexuality.

[venti-death-watch]

yknow i don’t have a defined sexuality hc for him but it’d be very interesting to explore an aroace-spec ratio who uses his ‘teacher who sees everyone around him as students’ philosophy as a way to ward off requests for a romantic relationship due to his strong ‘no dating students or coworkers’ philosophy. like he fully believes in his philosophy, it just grew out of his disinterest/uncomfortability around confessions/dating. does this make sense.

[itlearns]

Successfully missed asexuality day but my take today is positivity and memes are cool and important but we should whine and complain more.

[aromanticofficial]

this is all i ever end up talking about but im still mad so i gotta get it off my chest to people who will understand. my friend made a post at the start of pride month basically comiserating with fellow aspec people who would only be seeing 'love is love' for the whole month, which the implication that obviously it doesnt apply to us because yk aspec

and every. single fucking reply was someone desperately claiming that 'love is love' applies to platonic love too!! it applies to self love too!! despite how many times me and the friend in question reiterated that a) that still excludes aplatonic people and b) thats not the point! our queerness is defined by the lack of love, not what we can 'still do' and so the phrase is kind of meaningless to us. the worst response was when some random person called my friend homophobic?? which i can only assume was either a misinterpretation of the post or an aphobe trying to make a big deal out of nothing.

this happened half a year ago but it still makes me so mad that people dont seem to think we ever considered 'love is love' actually means something it was never meant to mean. it doesnt need to apply to everyone!! there will never be a phrase that can apply to everyone because humans are so different but that wasnt the point of the post though, it was saying that we only see 'love is love' and nothing else which excludes not only aspec people but trans and intersex people whose queerness is unrelated to love!! it wasnt even meant to be a discourse post it was meant to be sympathetic omg

yeah it's easier to defend a half-baked slogan than it is to actually listen and learn. hang in there anon

[i-suggest-aro]

So like, I've been seeing a lot of really aphobic (arophobic? I'm sorry, I can't really remember the correct word) posts, and it's been making me feel a lot worse about myself. I wanna be proud of being aromantic, but it's really hard when almost everyone seems to fucking hate you for it. How do I like, deal with this?

if you're seeing more arophobia on your dash than typical, that probably means something. check if any of your mutuals are reblogging stuff like that. if they are, unfollow and block them, but not before blocking the op of the arophobic posts first. you don't have to tolerate that shit, nor should you. you don't owe anyone an explanation or debate about your own identity, and people like that aren't easily convinced. this is something i have to learn too; i've been engaging too much with bad faith comments, one guy even went out of their way to find my main blog and harass me on there because i didn't block them fast enough.

if it gets too much, if you find yourself dreading opening your phone and seeing that bullshit, take a break. don't open tumblr for a few days. talk to people in real life; talk to your friends, your local queer community. realize that people in real life, the people around you that actually matter, they don't hold these beliefs. and if they do, they aren't really the people that matter.

[anachronisticcrab]

Disclaimer: Don't like? don't read, don't engage. More in an edited section at the bottom of the post.

Tell me why my roommate is kinda aphobic and started crying when I call them out on it ONCE

So we had a stupid argument (so dumb. But also not cause it's based in him being aphobic) over him shipping Jayvik in arcane.

My issues with this (I have not seen arcane nor will I watched it cause one of the characters has my dead name and it makes me uncomfy to hear it seen and spelled the same way, this is just what I have learned through ppl who have seen it)

Viktor is asexual canonically. Like from the creators mouth, he has been ace and possibly aro since the beginning. Everyone that I see that ships them draws Jayce and Viktor fucking. Leave him alone, he's an ace guy, I have like 3 and u gays have 5 million twinks to draw getting railed

Jayvik shippers often draw art in ways that comes across as ableist, pedophilic and infantalizing of Viktor. It's always big huge Jayce carrying around a teeny tiny Viktor and it bothers me. (Lots of ships do this, it's always weird and gross. I'm not pretending I've never enjoyed that art, cause it's sometimes really well drawn, but it's still a little creepy and ableist) ((Edit: not calling Jayvik pedophilic in canon, I'm saying the way that I've seen shippers treat them as 'Big strong man and tiny fragile uwu boy' comes across as pedophilic to me))

This is the big one: Jayce is Viktors allegorical rapist. The scene where Viktor does, Jayce throws him into a void and forever changes Viktors body and life without his consent because Jayce thought it would fix him. Very powerful as a disabled plot line of able bodied people doing things to a disabled body in order to 'fix' them, but gets even more powerful with Viktor being ace. An allo character does something to an ace characters body without their consent, forever changing their life, because they thought it would 'fix' them is an allegory for corrective rape. It's corrective rape. Don't ship Viktor with his allegorical rapist.

So those are my issues. I've talked to a few ppl about it, my roommate included. They know my opinion on it, just not the details cause he has a habit of crying his eyes out whenever he's criticized and I don't have the energy to deal with a grown man bawling his eyes out all the time.

The only thing I've ever said to him was an argument we got in where he said that making Viktor ace was infantalizing disabled bodies and I got pissed at him and he cried

Today, my roommate decided to show me and 2 friends of ours fanart of Jayvik, with the weird size dynamic and Jayce carrying Viktor around and I said 'how is that not infantalizing but him being ace is?'

My roommate agreed, and then I started talking about how that, and the allegorical rape, made it awful to ship Jayce and Viktor and I said 'leave the aces alone, we don't ask a lot'.

Tell me why he shut down and then began crying, so I left the room cause I'm not apologizing for telling him to keep his aphobia in check, and when I came back he left and hasn't said a word since.

Tell me why I have to shut up when he says it's funny to see attractive characters as sexless cause its an inherently humiliating quality, that making someone disabled asexual is infantalizing and gross, that the few ace characters there are are definitely fucking each other cause they're human, when he says aphobic things 10 times a day, but he gets to cry when I call him out on that?

Plus now I feel guilty cause my friends keep shooting me looks since I'm not apologizing, and when they started trying to placate him I was quiet other than to say 'not just about you, but like. Yeah' l

Why are allo people the way they are?

Edit: I've updated the tags to remove arcane and anti Jayvik, ppl were right that I shouldn't have added them to begin with. In my defense for anti Jayvik, I didn't know u needed hyphens in tags now for it to work properly, I'm not really active on tumblr these days. Secondly, Just so y'all know. I don't feel like arguing with allo people anymore cause I spend so much of my time catering to allo people. If you're upset, don't read. If u comment upset about me being pissed at allo people for an opinion that I'm objectively correct on, I will be blocking you immediately cause that's how the internet works. Don't like, don't engage. Leave me alone, this is a vent post cause I'm sick of allo people being stupid Third, not claiming that this is my roommate being aphobic. Of all the things he's done, this is one of the least aphobic, it's just still frustrating. This post is mostly because he can't take any criticism on anything without crying and it's irritating, especially when I call him out on questionable behaviour. Fourth, do NOT try to educate me, a fucking aroace person, on aroace terminology and realities. I am aware that not all ace ppl are aro and that not all aro ppl are ace and that ace ppl and aro ppl both can date and fuck. I know that shit. That's not what this is about. Fuck off. Fifthly, no I have not watched arcane, I say that so early on in the original part of this post. I will not watch arcane, this post isn't really about arcane. It's a vent post about my roommate not being able to handle me pointing out that their mindset and the way they view things is aphobic. This is not an attack of arcane, it's an attack of people refusing to listen to aroace ppl when we raise concerns. Such as a number of ppl in the comments did within an hour of me posting this. Lastly, I'm not saying you can't ship JayVik, do whatever you fucking want. I'm saying that I have issues with it as a ship, and I am irritated at my roommate for immediately crying and running off when I tried to raise my concerns and opinions on the relationship, the concerns I have coming from the place of an aroace person who is fed up with them being blatantly aphobic in other contexts and things that they say. Update TL;DR: Don't like? Don't read, don't engage. Not for you. If you try to argue with me, you will be blocked cause I don't have time for that shit. This is a vent post, not an attack on fucking anyone and the opinion of one random tumblr user has no affect on you or your favourite show. There are more important things to yell at ppl for.

[cl0ckworkqueerness]

[trigger warning: mention of sexual assault]

the specific breed of queer queerphobia is just as if not more frightening than non-queer queerphobia, specifically in this case as it relates to acespec/arospec people (terms which will hence be combined into "aspec" for the sake of clarity, see the tags for a quick note about this)

if it's not already clear from my posts, i am very supportive of the silenced, erased, and shunned parts of the queer community. i involve myself a great deal in breaking down the walls that queer people have decided to erect in order to determine who does and doesn't get to call themselves "queer". nothing breaks my heart more than seeing other people who experience the world in a way starkly different from perisex, allosexual, alloromantic, cisgender, heterosexual people, get shunned from a family who also experiences the world in such a difference way, simply because it's not different "enough", or not different in the way they want to be different

aspec people will always unquestionably be queer, regardless of anything else that would or wouldn't make them queer. period.

aspec people should not and should never need to "justify" themselves to attend pride, not just "as an ally", but as someone whose relationship with romance and sex (the act) differs from what is expected of a "normal" person. they are inherently different, they are inherently queer. full stop.

aphobia exists, regardless of whether or not you follow your blatant bigotry with "no it doesn't". you cannot erase your shittiness by following up your shittiness with "by the way, I'm not being shitty". and if you know you are being aphobic, and you are proud of such a thing, rethink the way you see queerness as a whole. you are a vile human being, and should unlearn the oppression olympics. you not only are an athlete in it, but you are the obstacles. you are the fucking problem.

aspec people regularly face discrimination and harassment for being aspec. the comments of "why do you refuse to give me grandkids" and "maybe you just haven't found the right person yet" and "you're broken" and "you're going through a phase" have all been said about gay people, about lesbians, and about aspec people. aspec people face violence for being aspec. aspec people face corrective rape for being aspec. aspec people face crocodile tears claws that intend to "help", aspec people face blood and claws that intend to hurt, aspec people face real, visible hatred. and even if they weren't "oppressed enough", WHICH THEY UNDENIABLY ARE, 1) there isn't an oppression goal someone needs to hit to become valid, and 2) queer people should not be defined by the oppression we face, anyway.

"b-b-but what about cishet asexual people!!!" i have never seen a sentence less scary in my life. cishet people can be queer, you know? cishet people can be intersex (if they choose to identify as queer), cis people can be asexual and aromantic, pericishet people can in fact be demisexual and heteroromantic, and guess what? they're still queer. they still differ from what's "normal". they're still allowed to pride, because pride is not meant to gatekeep.

pride is meant to celebrate our differences, to fight against those who try to suppress us, and to unite those who feel crushed by the heel of normality.

so don't fucking do their job for them.

[aro-bird]

I do have to say, as someone on the camp of "you could probably ship someone else who isn't non-partnering but honestly I don't care as long as you don't harass people over this", I think it's lost on some people that the reason why so many non-partnering aroaces may become defensive over these characters even if "it's just fandom" is the fact that a lot of aroaces who do fit these stereotypes and who may fall into this camp genuinely had horrible experiences about their social circles and yes, especially this fandom site, harassing them and saying they don't exist or that they're mentally ill and should "get fixed" among other things.

As common it is to see aspecs here on Tumblr, the queer social media site, you need to understand that there's still a lot of contempt for aroaces outside and inside this place. Hell, I received an ask calling aros and aces delusional just last Christmas Day 2023 that came with a wave of increased arophobia around that time. As much as that time period was definitely discourse against aroallo men, aphobes did not cherry pick on who they're sending hate to.

Besides this, a lot of non-partnering aroaces often receive this kind of dismissal in real life too and as much as some people may think it's not a big deal, it definitely fucks up your brain when people say you and your experiences not only don't matter but you are doomed to live a lonely and miserable life if you don't find someone. Even my otherwise very supportive relatives expressed this concern and it's absolutely out of care but it's fucking damaging to constantly hear that I will die alone if I don't find a partner (romantic, platonic, or otherwise).

This is besides dismissals like this or even non-acceptance had literally barred me from mental health care when I was a teenager because my specialist said I had a "distressed sexuality" and had specialists focused on that aspect rather than all my other issues.

The shipping of a non-partnering (typically romance repulsed or uninterested) character feels like another form of dismissal for someone like me, like my sexuality is not good enough or serious enough to be respected. The shipping of these characters sometimes reinforce the narrative that non-partnering aroace people can't find happiness on their own and do need someone (romantic, platonic, or otherwise) to be happy or they will become happier if they do find this someone. People are having fun with their ships but there are still many people who don't want to spend the time actually extending grace and understanding towards me and my experiences. I'm just another discourse topic and someone who's inconvenient to some of them.

This doesn't even account for how these fan communities aren't just filled with aspec people and do extend to allos who may take some of the discourse and actively apply it in real life to other real life aspec people. People who go and interact with real human beings and may hurt them or harass them. It isn't even accounting for the fact that even online things affect real people too.

Of course, I do understand that a lot more complex aspec identities often don't get the spotlight so they may express themselves through shipping fandom characters but non-partnering people should deserve more than these people isn't really the point of this post.

The point here is that there's a reason why a lot of non-partnering (typically repulsed or uninterested) aroace people get defensive about these things even in fan communities and it's very likely that it's because aphobia and especially against the stereotypical aroace™ still very much exist outside of our little community and they can be informed by media and the fans that consume it and this shit could genuinely have negative consequences. This of course extends to those who do have complex aspec identities as society does not treat those who don't live up to what is expected as "normal" in terms of romantic relationships and sexual attraction kindly.

Distancing yourself from these aroaces who do have frustrations with how media and fandom treat their sexuality because they're being "prudes" or are just affected by "purity culture" is unhelpful to say the least and honestly veers eerily close to shit I hear aphobes say about us.

Absolutely do stop people and block them if they're instigating and participating in harassment over shipping of all things, even these aroaces, but trying to say that every person who do have issues with shipping aroace characters are the same way with this is extremely lacking nuance and absolutely dismissive of other members of the community and why they may have the opinion they hold.

[starfieldcanvas]

hi not an expert but i thought i’d say something about the sysmed thing you posted

systems are formed by trauma at a young age causing a child’s personality to not form into one singular personality and instead split into multiple.

but theres also some people who “create” their system because they wanted to be a system, which just really isn’t possible. (or also “will” their system into being)

but i know most systems problems with the people who “create” their system (endogenic or willogenic) is the massive spreading of misinformation

i know people with did or osdd who when first realizing they were a system, and even still now, are told by endos that their trauma “isn’t enough” and that they’re endogenic too which also hurts people just discovering their a system thinking their endogenic because their trauma wasn’t enough or they don’t remember their trauma (which is a big part of did & osdd anyway, systems are typically formed to help the person deal with (by not dealing with) their trauma) and then people aren’t able to get the help they need

so, to someone pretty thoroughly outside the discourse, this largely reads like you've just got two different groups of people with similar conditions, and some people within each of those groups loudly assert that the other group cannot possibly be having the experience that group claims to be having. some traumagenic systems insist endogenic systems are "not really possible" and some endogenic systems think traumagenic systems "aren't really traumagenic" instead of both groups just taking for granted that obviously multiple kinds of experience can coexist without either invalidating the other.

it sounds strikingly similar to transmed discourse, so I understand why the "-med" language got borrowed.

about a dozen years ago I was up to date on the DID wiki page and was therefore fairly confident that so-called "multiple personalities" were all (I had to look this term up just now) iatrogenic, that is, caused by psychiatric leading. So when I came around to accepting that systems did seem to exist even in people who had never been to therapy, I assumed we were all lifting a middle finger to psychiatry's attempt to dismiss the system phenomenon. It's rather odd to learn that now there's a contingent insisting that they have psychiatric legitimacy but their endogenic "cousins" do not. like... y'all trust psychiatry to know what does and does not exist? when they largely didn't think traumagenic systems existed until very recently, and many within the institution still think it's 100% iatrogenic?

(i double checked with my local psychology graduate and indeed he was taught in school a decade ago that DID was a fringe diagnosis that did not really exist in modern practice.)

it's really just like transmeds then, isn't it? traumagenic systems have only barely gained a little bit of respect within the system and are still widely disbelieved, but instead of taking that as a sign that maybe psychiatry has only a very limited understanding of this phenomenon, some have decided to throw their endogenic cousins under the bus in a feeble, futile attempt to legitimize themselves.

whether or not endogenic systems really do "exist" in a meaningful way, i find the insistent rejection of them by people who are also frequently disbelieved by the institution to be shockingly shortsighted.

the primary objection to the possibility that endogenic systems exist cannot really be "some of them are assholes who spread misinformation". as that has literally nothing to do with whether or not they exist.

(and I feel obligated to ask if the "misinformation" in question is more often than not just "it's possible to be an endogenic system." because aphobes used to claim the statement "it's possible to be asexual as a minor" was grooming. so I don't take those kinds of accusations at face value anymore.)

or is it really just "the field of psychiatry has not agreed this experience is possible yet, so I am obligated to argue with anyone who reports their lived experience as counterevidence"? because as I have said, that just sounds like every past failure of the psychiatric imagination. advances in psychiatric research are very valuable, but if you're not familiar with the ways in which psychiatry as an institution tends to fall short of capturing reality, then you can't be trusted to wield its evidence in a responsible way.

are there contingents among the endogenic and traumagenic folks who simply believe in describing their own experience in appropriately limited terms, rather than aggressively insisting their experiences are universal for all systems???

[cosmicredcadet]

every time i see a post that is like "ughh why cant we have aspec characters who aren't aroace for once" I have to do a double take like "is the aroace rep in the room with us right now?" because genuinely....where is all this aroace rep y'all are complaining about? Why cant i find it yet it's apparently the only aspec rep we get?? You admit that TV never says the word aromantic so where is the aroace rep. So far I've pretty much only seen canonically asexual characters and not much else buddy.

[angeledeggs]

Main 6 + The Courtiers head cannons with a MC/Partner under the asexual spectrum

Asra💜:

Honestly, he dosent quite mind.

Asra knows that there's more to a relationship than physical intimacy cause he fucking grown.

That being said, his love language is physical touch. But if you're uncomfortable with it or prefer other means of affection, of course Asra will show his love in other ways.

Of course he'll want to know where exactly under the spectrum you fall. Not, of course, to try and coax you into anything or deem you a lost cause, but just to better inform himself.

They love you very much and your sexuality won't change the fact that they love you from your personality, and not your body or sexuality or anything.

If anyone ever makes fun of you or tries to demean or "change" you for your sexuality, Asra will definitely yell at them. If he ever does see or hear someone do anything like that, he'll be absolutely fuming but take you both away from the situation and make sure you're okay.

Muriel💙:

Dosent know what it means, but kind of nods when you come out to him. Will probably ask Asra the very next day and hurriedly buy you a birthday card that he has scratched out and wrote Happy asexual! On it.

Dosent really know what to do. Should he get a cake? Is a cake too much? Should he talk to you? Should he not make it a big deal? In the end (after more advice from Asra) he just has a quiet little talk confirming that he supports and loves you the same.

Hates it when people are aphobic, and will most likely just take you two somewhere else for both of you to calm down. If you cry, though, he'll definitely get a bit teary himself.

Gets a little cup cozy or a rug or something in your flag colors just since Asra recommend to. If he sees it makes you happy, it turns into a regular thing.

Loves you no matter asexuality spectrum or not!

Julian🦠:

Understands completely when you come out to them and is pretty supportive about it. But then he gets all stuttery trying to explain he supports you and can barely speak.

Will probably get you your flag the next day just to make sure you know he's 100% supportive. If you already have a flag, he'll get extremely embarrassed of himself.

If anyone tries to say a single word about your sexuality in a negative or judge light, he definitely has a few choice words for them and will make sure you two get away from the person, even if it's friends or family.

Loves you the same amount if you'd not be on the asexual spectrum. Loves you if you're sex repulsed, sex positive, or anything in between.

Nadia💎:

Is pretty casual when you tell her.

Probably just goes "oh, okay" or something and the rest of the day stays the same.

But little did you know that during the night she immediately researched your label and the Asexual spectrum thoroughly to understand you. The next day she had gotten you a little pin for your bag or shirt or something and curtly hands it to you with a proud, satisfied smile.

Would definitely defend you from anyone who tried to judge you. If you get any looks at pride (or any other place, for that matter) for being 'confused' or 'not really lgbtq', she will very aggressively begin to scream out the definition of the asexual spectrum. It's... Surprisingly affective?

Will most likely get you a cute little thing in your colors every pride just to show you she cares, as gift giving is her love language.

Portia🧡:

So touched you trusted her enough to tell her, and probably starts to cry and hug you. She always wants you to feel comfortable with her, so you telling her means a lot to her.

Will probably ask you for your exact label so she can research it to know specifically what your label is. Not to pressure you of course, she's simply curious and wants to know.

Will most likely get a flag or something for her home just for you, even if you don't visit or live with her. If you ask her about it, she insists it was always there.

She'll probably make some poorly iced cookies or something a few days after you came out in celebration of your coming out, but besides that, she dosent make a big deal of it.

Will definitely lose it completely if someone says anything about your sexuality in a negative light. She might even get mad if someone mentions it without you mentioning it first.

Loves you the same no matter what, and will probably never stop being so affectionate and caring towards you.

Lucio👑:

Blank stare for a few seconds. He really doesn't know what it is. He's just like, "Okay" and doesn't bring it up the rest of the day. He researches it later and realizes, oh, that's what asexual meant!

Brings it up casually the next day and slips in that he supports you in his 'cool, chill' way. Nervous on the inside.

Probably just gets you a little something in your colors every once in awhile that's small and stuffs it into your pockets so that he doesn't need to express his affection through words.

Just has a deep talk with you one night from the heart telling you about how he dosent think less of you and will still always love you

Will most likely lose it on someone if they invalidate your sexuality or will ignore the person in favor of getting you out of there and comforting you, it just depends on how angry he gets.

Dosent really mention it, but is just silently supportive in his own way.

Valerius🍷:

Plays it off like he doesn't care. Probably just gives you a bored look and keeps drinking his wine. Inside, he's a wreck.

He's worried, of course. Not worried for his 'bodily needs', no, he's worried he's been pressuring you without realizing it and has made you feel uncomfortable. He makes you breakfast the next day and stumbles through an apology about respecting your boundaries before he even realizes he hasn't done anything.

Probably reads an actual book or something about the asexual spectrum just to know about it. He don't mention it or nothing, of course. But if you ever find it, he'll be embarrassed.

Will just ignore anyone who shames you, but makes sure you're okay if anyone ever does and will probably get you two out of the vicinity.

Probably writes in his journal about it just talking it out to himself and in the end, he loves you just the same. Not like you being on the asexual spectrum would change his opinion on you, of course.

Vlastomil🐛:

Pretends to understand, definitely doesn't. Much too old to understand all those 'new labels'. But he wants to understand. So he talks around with some friends until he does.

When he finally does understand, he tries to make an awkward conversation about how organisms reproduce asexually, but sort of just makes a fool of himself. Gets the point across, though, that he supports.

Will buy many books on asexuality and fills his shelves up, wanting to show that he's committed to understanding and supporting you.

Gets many old fashioned posters about asexuaity and cheerfully will hang them up.

If anyone invalidates your sexuality or if they try to guilt you about it, he'll definitely get you out of the room and threaten that person later.

Will definitely love you just the same either way. He's been around the block a few times before anyway, he's not going to disrespect or passive aggressively push boundaries.

All in all, it won't change or warp his view on you if you're under the asexual spectrum

Valdemar🧠:

Is under the aromantic and asexual spectrum themselves, and probably just gives a curt nod in response. A small smile probably would play on their lips when you told them, though. They'll never admit how good it feels to be trusted enough for you to tell them.

Already knows a lot about the asexual spectrum, so they don't need to research about it all, since they know all the microlabels and many of the meanings.

Will probably make a joke or two about it to you when nobody is listening, which is extremely out of character from them and surprises you. Pretends to not understand sex for comedic purposes and will make horrified faces when anyone mentions it

Notices anyone saying a negative thing about your sexuality before you do, and will lead you out of the room with the insistence of suddenly needing to buy hand sanitizer with you.

Will probably get a flag for you. They do expect a heartfelt response in thanks, though.

Volta🍰:

Bursts into sobs because she immediately is so happy that you told her. Very easy to be consoled, though, and hurriedly explains that she's happy.

Definitely will load you up with merch of your label just so you can have it in case you ever want it.

Probably looks at a few charts of the aspec just to make sure she can accurately understand you.

Will hurriedly rush you out of a room if someone else tries to say anything mean to you about falling under the asexual spectrum. She's probably going to cry angrily sometime later, too, with how upset it makes her.

Will make sure to assure you the day you come out that she'll never try to change you or even want to change you, because its who you are.

Vulgora⚔️:

Nods a bit and is surprisingly calm. Doesn't want to stress you out, so they stay surprisingly chill about it.

Asks around the other courtiers so that they can understand a bit more.

Dosent really understand the 'whole flag shit', but will probably get or make you one, even, just to show that they support you and who you are.

Will most definitely go to pride with you if you'd like and insist upon 'that flag shit', even though they already have gotten you around three.

Is, once more, shockingly calm if someone should insult or say soemthing snarky about you being aspec. They'll just lead you away and make sure you're awake before you both continue their day. They're definitely angry, yeah. But they want to make sure you're okay more than they want to punch that asshole.

Will probably stitch you a few patches or other things with your fag colors too, just for fun

❀

Thanks for reading my writing! Requests are open for anyone who wants to make them, just make sure to follow the rules stated in my first post :)

[themightymoose]

Secret Cupet

Here we are folks. The episode I've heard whispers about for so very long

I'm scared :(

Poor Youngmee is just being manhandled

"I'm confused." mecore

That laugh ain't that bad

Josh is so chill I aspire to be like that

*GASP* DOG YAOI REAL????

They're people watching in a very creepy way right now

Russell... my aro ace king who we stan

Also might I say Pepper probably wouldn't be doing that or is it too early in the episode to tell

Poor Vinnie leave him alone :(

Yeah Pepper feels ooc here

This mustn't stand

Is this gonna be another "hating on the boys for whatever reason" episode

Penny Ling aphobic moment

This episode is already getting on my nerves and I'm only 3 minutes in oh geez oh no

A goat and a pig on a leash 💀

Russell looks like he wants to die

I thought Russell was gonna call it creepy

Oh god I don't like seeing that

"They call it writing ✨a letter✨"

Youngmee is best therapist

I hate this goat

Honestly Russell is doing god's work rn

Oh my god we got a reprise :0

BOOOOOOOO >:0

Russell has to deal with these dumbasses

I love their friendship it's beautiful

The record scratch 💀

Uh oh oh dear

We get it Hasbro he's the stupid one

Blythe is so confused

This acting is so bleh

Oh it's Sugar Sprinkles

This is actually pretty disturbing if you think about it for more than two seconds

Damn Russell is flying now

Russell sounds drunk

The pure terror she must be going through

Minka is canonically color blind

Russell stop talking like that I don't like it

Teleportation powers

I feel so bad for them 😭😭😭

I hate it I hate it so much

At least Zoe is saved from the A plot

Penny is literally screaming for her life I don't even know what to say to that

GO AWAAAAAYYYY SUGAR OH MY GOOODD

Was she just waiting for her moment

They're hiding now while the boys are literally doing this against their will

THEY'RE SCREAMING THEY'RE TERRIFIED I CAN'T-

"Aw, they're playing hard to get." Sftu

This is very painful I'm very sad

Did Sugar just call them touch-starved

Kinda funny but she's ignoring the fact this is not consensual in the slightest

Pepper looked like she was about to strangle Sugar Sprinkles for a second

Huh at least it didn't take much convincing

How did she even do that

Bruh don't thank her it was the barest of bare minimums that she could do

They have literally every right to be mad

I'm going to strangle this cat

And Sugar Sprinkles doesn't even learn some kind of lesson does she

Like how she shouldn't mind control people

Sugar Sugar Sugar come here I just want to talk okay I promise that's it

And they're still being creepy

I was expecting Russell to break the ukulele

He should've

Anyways if there's a fix-it fic of this episode somewhere I would love to see it

If it exists of course

Which it probably doesn't

[heartbreakslow]

Hot take: Darren isn't aphobic OR "hypersexual"

As somebody who is a fan of Darren/Cash, I feel like a really interesting relationship gets flattened when you don't look at Darren's motivations outside of being someone who causes problems for Cash.

One reason I like Darren a lot is that there are a lot of characters in media who superficially look/act like Darren--they're queer guys (or queer guy adjacent in Darren's case) who are feminine, raunchy, and funny; and they're a supportive friend to the girl MC. But Darren isn't this character. They have their own stuff going on. And they're not just rude in a funny way, they can lash out and be really cruel.

Then when Darren acts unlikable, you get people saying, "Darren is so funny and quotable, they'd be so great if they just stopped doing X" (e.g. if Darren just behaved like a trope instead of a flawed character).

Darren's whole deal is laid out pretty clearly in the first episode. They see the world through the lens of being rejected for their gender and sexuality, and they're pretty oppositional or transactional with most people. They only are genuine with a few female friends. They don't have any boys or men that they trust. Their hookups seem to be guys that they don't particularly like, who don't care about them, and who don't necessarily identify as queer. But they're very proud of having a lot of sex and performing that identity to shock people. Also note that they tried to hook up to get a place to sleep after being kicked out of their parents' house--put a pin in that, because they try to sleep with the same guy (who they openly dislike) when fighting with Cash in s2.

Enter Cash. We see Darren and Cash actually like talking to each other. Cash is saying things like "you're the only cool person at our school" and keeps asking them to hang out and just staring at them and acting really nervous. And Darren tells Amerie they don't know what's going on. Yeah, I bet they don't! Then Cash gets jealous of Darren hugging another guy, kisses them, stays up all night walking around the city and talking, makes out with them outside their house…and Darren complains to their friends, "I'm getting mixed signals," because they didn't hook up.

This isn't about how "hypersexual" Darren is! It's about their fucked up view of relationships. Throughout the episode where Darren is the most unlikable, we see their anxiety ratcheting up because they can't get Cash to have sex with them. They vent to their friends, flipping between complaining about Cash--"he chickened out," "he's dead to me"--and insulting themself--"I'm being a frigid little bitch!"

After multiple schemes, which all result in Cash being very happy to hang out with them but stopping them when they try to initiate sex, they finally try to initiate something when he's asleep, yikes. His reaction makes it 100% clear he doesn't want to have sex anytime soon.

Then, the "aphobic" moment. Rather than apologizing, Darren just starts yelling at Cash, calling him an f-slur who doesn't want to be an f-slur, saying he's using them as an experiment, and finishing with "there might be something really wrong with you."

Yes, it's terrible behavior. It's not aphobic, because Darren doesn't know Cash is ace! (Also, it would be terrible regardless of why Cash didn't want to have sex.)

Their reaction comes from their misinterpretation of what's going on, or rather, their inability to interpret what Cash could want from them. They're throwing out multiple interpretations--he's closeted, he has internalized homophobia, he's straight, he's a serial killer--because none of these interpretations make sense. The explanation right in front of them, that he likes them but doesn't want to have sex, doesn't enter Darren's mind until they've had some time to process the situation and talk to their friends.

Once they see the situation for what it is, they then act completely different because they're no longer looking at it through the lens that they're being rejected or jerked around. You can't really account for how dramatically their behavior changes without acknowledging that they initially misinterpreted Cash's behavior as being about them, and when they understood that it wasn't about them, they were okay with trying a different kind of relationship.

This is just like…well-written, sympathetic characters having an interesting storyline, that I don't think I've ever seen done before outside of niche fanfic. And if I never see someone call Darren aphobic or hypersexual again, it will be too soon.

[gordonengineswifenirmal]

Ok, so now tumblr thinks I’m a gay bloke now lol. That’s better than the women I guess, but still wrong. I didn’t report this one, as even though it’s wrong, n I’m not into dating men either, it’s not offensive. There’s no sexually suggestive images. It amuses me how wrong it is. Apparently, there r no asexual ads, because society still can’t get into its mind that Asexuality is valid as anyone else, and that we have the right to be acknowledged for NOT wanting sex or romance, just as much as folks have a right to be acknowledged for whatever gender/sex/romance they DO want.

I guess the Aleve is to deal with the headaches caused by aphobes and other ignorant gobshites trying to force their narratives on us.

It’s funny too, because we aren’t telling people they can’t do their thing, we just don’t want it, and we should be respected. Apparently, this is too complex an idea for some folks to handle.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm so tired of people "helpfully" "letting you know" me about my own fanfic. Yes, I understand that not all aro people are ace. I understand not all ace people are aro. I know I am extremely fucked up for being both. I know good ace people are sex-positive or sex-neutral and like to fuck. I know I'm fucked in the head/broken/stereotypical/bad for not liking it. But I should be allowed to write an aroace sex-repulsed character without people assuming I'm allo and aphobic and in need of correction regarding my misconceptions regarding "real" ace and "real" aro people.

An hour ago I got a comment on how actually ace people like masturbating. The character had shifted uncomfortably in his seat because a friend of his said she spent her teenage years self-harming, masturbating and crying over being a closeted lesbian. Clearly, there's no reason to be uncomfortable with the idea of a friend being trapped in a hopeless situation - it must be that disgusting broken non-sex-having non-sex-loving freak being fucked up again!

I get that I am the kind of freakish monster that none of the good aces or good aros would ever want to be around or see. But I'm not putting out ace representation on TV. I just want to write a story for myself without being reminded that I'm a piece of shit in the comments. I guess that's more than I should have hoped for. More than I should have deserved.

It's funny. Writing fanfic used to be what I did when I felt suicidal and I kept telling myself that come college, shit would get easier. Now I'm in college and I'm realizing high school was the happiest time of my life, before I realized how disgusting I am.

I deleted my fic so at least I don't have to deal with that anymore but it still stings, knowing even in fiction, there's no place for people like me.

Assuming I count as a person. Sometimes I think of myself more like a thing. I feel like that's more accurate. I have more in common with a rock or a trash bag than a human being.

--

Dude, this is full on meltdown mode, and you need to go talk to a therapist about it.

Wanting to fuck or not wanting to fuck is normal.

Thinking of yourself as disgusting, however, is not healthy nor is it realistic. That's your brain lying to you, and it's not something tumblr randos can help with.