#that all ace/aro people are always content being ace/aro 100% of the time and if that's not your experience you're not really ace/aro

[starlene]

crosses "Jean Valjean ace discourse on my dash" off my 2024 tumblr bingo card

sighs wearily

[graysongraysoff]

u kno

roughly a year back i embarked upon something of a ~sexuality crisis~ that lasted for ~kind of a while~ bc i kind of blundered into writing smut for a couple rps i was in and was like "writing smut fun actually??" which resulted in me like. not being able to write it anymore for a long time lmao and feeling all gross and hypocritical about it. bc i already have such a complex about being "fake ace" for a number of reasons and having fun writing smut only exacerbated this, bc while i am still 100% certain i have never been sexually attracted to a person or a person’s physical attributes, i was like finding out there are things people can do that i find, yes, sexy. but simultaneously i'm still not really interested in actually having sex? and all of this felt very confusing and contradictory, lol.

and it didn’t help to hear that common refrain of “oh so much of the smut on ao3 is written by ace folks ace folks write so much smut lol” bc like. idk the way people would always frame it was something like “it’s ace people’s distance from sex and sexuality that makes them good at writing it bc of their objective perspective” or whatever but that’s not how it felt to me?? like i would never describe it as feeling “distant” or “objective” or like i was some outsider looking in. i feel really deeply personally connected to everything i write, no matter how like technically distant it is from my lived experience. does that make sense?? like i don’t feel like some kind of fucking scientist observing and recording things; i put myself in everything i write because i don’t know how you would write about characters’ emotions and reactions to things without feeling all of that yourself to some extent. it’s not sympathy it’s empathy, and to a very high degree.

but recently i discovered youtube video essayist james somerton who does a lot of queer/gay content (unrelated his video on attack on titan is fantastic and should be required watching) and i was like letting his stuff autoplay while getting ready for work one morning about a week ago and thus got to listen to a podcast he did with a gay ace co-host about asexuality and stuff, and this co-host talked about how he enjoyed cybering and like writing about sex and having written sexual encounters but found the actual experience of sex like underwhelming and disappointing, specifically saying the real thing like never lives up to what he can write or imagine. and idk hearing someone talk about it like that was really like. helpful and validating for me?? hearing “asexuality is a spectrum uwu” is often too vague for me to really get anything out of it, but hearing someone specifically talk about their place on the spectrum as anything other than a sex-repulsed aro/ace and also having their experience be validated by the allosexual person they’re talking to about it, idk. it made me feel like less of a freak and a hypocrite to know that there’s at least one guy out there who’s like “yeah i like having written sexual encounters but the real thing doesn’t really interest me” and that he’s comfortable enough to talk about it in those terms and to still identify as ace and to have at least one other person sitting there with him clearly not thinking he’s any less ace for it.

idk i’ve been thinking about this a lot in the week since i listened to that podcast and i just wanted to get it out of my brain, lol. i just like. 1.) really appreciated stumbling upon that video so much and 2.) really wish there was more content like that out there for ace folks like me who like. struggle with not feeling ace enough bc so much ace pride is like. “i’m incorruptible.�� lmao. like some more nuance would really be great, idk.

[deepdarkbrain]

I've said just about everything to my therapist.

TW: all of them

Hi, my name is Ryn (they/them) and I've said just about everything to my therapist. Before I get into too much here, be forewarned, I don't want to pull any punches on this blog. I want to be able to share (just about) everything that I would share with my therapist. This blog is going to include posts about dark and difficult subjects ranging from basic mental health to suicide, self harm, substance abuse, etc. I'm 100% going to swear and say what could be considered terrible things. What I will promise though, is that I will always include trigger warnings at the beginnings of my posts and there is a permanent content warning at the top of my blog.

I want to be open and honest about these kinds of dark, intimate subjects not to romanticize them or to encourage others to follow me down what will sometimes be the wrong path. But to share my experiences in the hopes that it'll help someone else feel like, "Oh yeah, I'm not alone on this dumb planet." Having grown through pre-internet times to now, one incredibly helpful thing I've found the younger generations using is the internet to break mental health taboos. Being honest and talking about it, even with a little levity sometimes (I'm looking at you memes), can help.

I've been seeing the same therapist for many, many years now. We've worked through so many things; childhood traumas, hospitalizations, relationships, work struggles, and everything in between. We've had discussions about how shit the American health care system is and also shared wins.

They've had a couple kids. I've started to accept I'm not broken, I'm just really fucking neurodivergent. Not exactly equivalent to some, but to me, hell yeah. I'm killing it.

Here's a little background on me. I am in my early 30s and I've been dealing with mental illness (major depressive disorder mostly, plus anxiety, ADHD, and autism) for the entirety of my life. You'll notice I specifically say "dealing with" and not "suffering from," which is the more common phrasing. This is something I work really hard to do. For me personally, speaking about my MIs in a semi-light way and using specific language really helps me accept and advocate for myself. A psychologist I had in a group therapy session once told us,

Honestly that one statement changed everything for me. One of my biggest pet peeves around how people treat those of us with MIs is the age old trope, "Just think positively!" It drives me batshit insane. For one it implies that I enjoy feeling like garbage at random and destroying relationships with people I care about for no reason. And for another it implies that who I am and how I live my life is inherently wrong.

Something I'm going to tell you, probably over and over again as I write this blog, is that if you deal with any kind of MI, YOU ARE NOT WRONG. I even have to remind myself of this, pretty regularly to be honest. There is something that's going on in your life, in your brain, in your physiology that is causing this to happen and it sucks and we all wish it would just go away, but at the very baseline, it's not wrong. You're not broken. You're just different, and different is okay.

More about me, I am wildly queer and I will fight you about it. Not really, because confrontation is extremely triggering for me, but I do feel really strongly about my LGBTQ+ community. I truly believe they are one of the most welcoming, accepting communities on the planet. Personally I identify as pansexual/asexual/aromantic (pan/ace/aro) because sexuality is a spectrum and I love everyone and no one at the same time, and I am non-binary because gender norms are dead. Use whatever pronouns you want for me, this is an internet blog, who's to say I'm even a real human?

Something I've gotten into recently with my therapist is called "Internal Family Systems Therapy." So I'll probably bring it up a lot. As I am a mere mortal and not an authority on literally anything, please follow the link to read more educated material about this subject. Otherwise, here's my very, very broken down, idiot, tl;dr.

IFST is a type of therapy that centers around the idea that within every person's mind, there are separate parts with separate purposes, usually to protect the base part. Recently in therapy I equated it to, "a close cousin of Dissociative Identity Disorder," in that you think of these separate parts as different versions or personalities of yourself. For example, in my situation I feel that within my mind there are at least five separate "me's" that are all Ryn but also each their own Ryn.

Of course, firstly there is me. The very essence of who I am. Funny, smart, loving, and able to think clearly and rationally. This is the part of me that has been me from birth and will only ever change for the better. It is the base, the original. This is the part of me that wants to stand up for itself but most often gets overtaken by the other parts. Base me gets frustrated when people use MI terms flippantly (ie. "Oh I'm so OCD!" "I'm goth so I'm also depressed." "You're like totally schizophrenic!"). Drives me bananas. Just don't do it.

Next there is depression. This is the part of me that experiences deep sadness, mental anguish, self hatred, and many other nasty, no good things. Usually the depression part of me is equivalent to someone I like to call Floor Ryn. People who know me well, know if I tell them I have become Floor Ryn, it means I've gotten so low that the only thing I'm able to do is lay down on my kitchen floor and exist. It is not comfortable, it does not make me feel better, but I simply cannot do anything else. I'm nigh on catatonic. Though at other times depression is sobbing for hours and being unable to listen to music with lyrics for fear that I will start sobbing.

Because depression is what I deal with the most and what comes up for me the most, there's a lot to it. Depression isn't just emptiness, it can also be cruel. To myself and to others. It's the part that has been hospitalized for attempting suicide. It's the part that created the hundreds of scars that live on my body. It's the part that has told friends I hate them when really I don't. It doesn't care about the exciting plans the me part of me made for next week, it just wants to cry and rage and feel miserable.

Next there is anxiety, and this is the second of my more prominent parts. This part overthinks, panics, has meltdowns/temper tantrums, and tries to fix everything. It's neurotic and selfish. It's the part that picks at my nail beds. It's also both blind and hyperaware of everything around me. It's that toddler at the mall beating their tiny, fat fists on the floor while you're thinking their parent should be doing a better job parenting. This part is also surprisingly rational; it can be bargained with. It can be given evidence and shown that everything is okay. I find anxiety to be easy to manage on a daily basis. But I do have meds for emergencies.

Next is ADHD, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. This one is somewhat new to me. I've probably always had it, but haven't been diagnosed until adulthood. This part always has at least five projects going at once (I'm an artist and just a creator in general). ADHD can't pay attention in lectures, can't stay still, is terrible at exams, needs to multitask, and constantly wants to go off on tangents. It's hyper, impulsive, and generally content, if not good-spirited. It makes me question occasionally if I inherited my dad's bi-polar disorder. I haven't; I've been told many times by many practitioners. But the thought's still there (hello, anxiety).

Finally autism, and again this one is new to me. This is the part that feels like an alien because I can't understand why you feel the way you're feeling or fathom what you're thinking. It's the part I think that is the most ace/aro. It's the part that doesn't care about dating or sex and doesn't understand how you can't live without your partner for two days. Also it's the part that can't look you in the eye when we're talking and says shitty things sometimes because it forgets that yeah, it is actually human and has to follow human social rules.

All of these personalities of me coexist at once but can also present themselves more individually. They're each trying to do something for me. Depression is, to use another therapist's words (Kati Morton), "pulling the ripcord" to yank me away from a situation it deems triggering. Anxiety is working to repair and investigate to find a solution to the problem at hand. As for ADHD and autism, I think mostly they're just along for the ride. ADHD is kind of a bro, a Gryffindor (big Harry Potter nerd here). But they have their uses, I suppose.

Am I perfect? No, absolutely not. Do I want to be perfect? Not really, no, sounds hard and depression isn't up for the challenge. In thinking about perfection, I like to think of the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which essentially means to embrace the beauty of imperfection. As an artist, I've heard of it mostly in the context of kintsugi ceramics where pieces of pottery that have broken -- whether on purpose or accidental -- are repaired using something that will emphasize that it was once broken. I've often seen it where the shards are attached back together with gold so that the cracks are almost more beautiful than the original piece.

So, to try to find a conclusion to this post, I am mentally ill. I have been for a long time and I will be for a long time more. I am not broken. I am not wrong. I am not perfect. And all of these things are okay. I want to improve myself, sure, but I think everyone should strive to do that, MI or not. All I want to do with this blog is share my experiences and the sometimes comical ways I twist my deep, dark brain to ease the pain a little in the hopes that someone else might feel comfortable sharing those things, too.

Because you know I totally want to hear the ridiculous and stupid shit you've said to your therapist before, no matter how cynical and morose. Seriously, so I can share it with mine next week.

[vern-a]

1) the game itself. Its minecraft. Weve seen the amazing and creative things people do with minecraft. People have gone around country censorship laws on books with minecraft. Schools use it for education. Its available to anyone with a device and 10 eur (mobile ver). It helps connect people, giving a fun space to interact with others. Immense parallel play grounds. Huge diversity for play styles. Neurodivergency friendly - no eye contact or body language processing required.

Qsmp has many mods that make the game prettier and also - accessible. Warp stones and plates have made lovely community hubs, the brazilians made cute little bus stops that take you places, multiple players have made freely accessible experience farms so other players can always use these teleportation devices.

2) the server (+admins). Its whole premise is removing language barriers. In-game real-time translations are available in SO many languages. People can talk comfortably in their native language, other people see the translation in THEIR native language and reply the same way. No middle language.

As the server has progressed, more and more accessibility accommodating changes have been implemented. Whenever there is even a small complaint about accessibility the admins are ON that shit.

3) The community. Speaking of admins they really make sure the streamers are having fun. Besides the lore, the admins tend to show up as diverse characters to simply hang out and provide company.

There could be a segment about streams themselves too! Hanging out in chats, putting streams on to feel companionship, improve your day and so on.

Quackity has picked out such kind people to play on it. The streamers are all about communication and making sure everyone feels comfortable. They hype up the communitys fan content and have made a big interconnected cross-banning network to keep their chats polite.

The communities of the streamers are very kind too (yes there are bad apples- this post is about positivity instead). There is support all around for language learners, people who delve into experiencing the different cultures, artists (includes EVERY art form) and the people who are just here to simply have fun.

4) QUEER ON PURPOSE. WE HAVE SO MUCH QUEER REP. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY ARO/+/ACE PEOPLE IN ONE PLACE. SEE THIS POST AND THIS ONE!!!!

5) the LORE! The whole storyline is based on companionship, community and love. Even if you cannot trust someone, you will still help them because there are more powerful things trying to kill or torture you and everyone you love. You will extend your hand to your mortal enemy as many times as you need to have them safe again.

Create mod nerds are making farms and factories for first the benefit of others and only second for bragging rights of being the richest on the server. They only want to be rich to give it away to others. There are stockpiles of resources, community resource chests, players carry around things they dont need in case someone else might. Badboyhalo didnt have to spend days grinding armour for the kids but he did it anyway.

In the qsmp world, where the federation and code entities (i know its complicated - its still relevant) and mysterious eye creatures and the world itself wants to kill you, its so easy to become hostile or apathetic but no one does. Because love and care prevail above all else.

Even if you think youre beyond saving - possessed, killing your friends, killing their children; losing grip on who you remember yourself to be - people will still turn to rehabilitation first. They WILL love you. They DO love you.

Specific examples i hold dear: characters with memory loss or inability to tell reality from dreams. How others treat them. Fit believes in phil 100%, even if the things phil describes seeing fit cant see. Fit and pac paused their date and took phil with them to their date location to make sure their friend wasnt alone. Etoiles patiently reminds badboyhalo about his memories, the places theyre in, the people around badboy, without judgement or frustration. As many times as badboy needs. Bagi was all laughs about it at first but she saw the way etoiles acted and mirrored him.

Its so gentle everyone is so gentle and caring. ON PURPOSE. They CHOOSE to love and choose to do it so INTENTIONALLY. And they will OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT TOO

Its late and im bad at talking. I have gone off topic. Love is spilling out of me and i can scoop and scoop but it will not make sense or be contained.

Plus minecraft is masterful at resource renewing. That also. Tubbos factory is flourishing with plants thanks to his daughter and is fully powered by renewable resources.

Yeah.

Qsmp. Its solarpunk.

Qsmp is so solarpunk

[onstoryladders]

Hi, how did you know you were aroace? I'm pretty sure I am but I'm still not 100% sure. I hate dating, sex makes me hella uncomfortable, literally my ideal life is just me being alone lol.

I thought a lot about myself and my experiences growing up before I decided to use this label. I spent most of my teenage years thinking I was straight. I only ever got crushes on boys, but I never talked to them, and I was okay just crushing on them from afar. I could also get rid of my crushes pretty easily, so I never quite understood when other people said they couldn't do it lol

I've always been a hopeless romantic, but my idea of romance has always been weird, a little bit different from what other people seemed to be searching for. I loved romance stories but when it came to reality they all felt bland and boring. I also never felt like dating like other people did, the idea of having to see a person for so many days a week made me (and still makes me) feel almost claustrophobic. Like no thanks, just-- no lol

I only had crushes on people I didn't know or didn't know well, and even then, as soon as I so much as thought that the person liked me back, I stopped being attracted to them. Even more, my attraction turned into repulsion. The idea of concretizing my feelings nauseated me.

For the longest time I just thought there was something wrong with me. Then I searched online, found some aro content on blogs and some forums and YouTube. And I remember watching a specific video and thinking: uhhh, I can relate a little too much to this lol

But it took me some time to label myself. I had to ask myself some questions – about what I felt, and what I wanted, and what I thought I wanted only because it was “how life worked” and no one ever offered an alternative.

As for the ace part, I just never cared much about sex. When I was younger I was sex-repulsed, even sex-negative at times. Now I'm neither, but I still don't experience sexual attraction for people I am close to – only strangers (almost never) and celebrities (... all the time gdnrudgsy).

So yeah, this is my experience. Each individual in our community has their own, though, so I'm not sure you'll be able to relate to any of this. I think sureness is overrated anyway. I think that people can change sometimes, and that knowing yourself is a lifelong journey. It doesn't matter whether you're 100% sure of a label, because you can always change it in the future if it doesn't fit anymore, but the important thing is that it's comfortable right now.

So if thinking yourself as aroace makes you feel safe and comfortable in your skin... just do it 💚

Wishing you all the best, anon, mwah.

[comingoutofthecauldron]

let’s talk about lesbophobia in fandom

i don’t like to use the word “lesbophobia” unironically because of all the gross radfem terfy connotations, so i will clarify right off the bat that i am neither a terf nor an aphobe and that if you are i want you off my blog like, right now. unfortunately, the meaning of lesbophobia has been so warped by alt right lesbians that seeing it in an unironic context makes me, a lesbian, uncomfortable, which speaks volumes in itself. so to clarify, lesbophobia is essentially homophobia with a pinch of sexism thrown into the mix, and it’s running rampant in supposed safe spaces and, more relevantly, fandom. 

/i’d also like to clarify that i’m not only speaking on lesbophobia, but also the general disgust and disdain for all wlw in fandom, and am using it as a sort of umbrella term/

lesbophobia and disdain for wlw has been around forever, but whilst gay positivity, mlm and mlm ships have been steadily increasing in popularity within fandom over time, wlw and wlw ships have remained perpetual underdogs. why? because lesbophobia has become a fandom within itself. both in and outside of fandom, we see instances of casual lesbophobia every single day—from aggression towards wlw to something as simple and prevalent as the complete and utter lack of sapphic ships and characters in media. hatred of lesbians and wlw is practically a trend, and it’s seeping in through the cracks of fandoms who are already facing issues with minorities and marginalized groups (i.e. racism, ableism). if you honestly think that lesbophobia isn’t prevalent as hell in fandom right now, you’re either not a wlw, you’re not all that involved in fandom, or you’re dumb as shit. 

just look at ships. in almost every single fandom, the ratio of mlm ships to sapphic ships is ridiculously unbalanced. people are quick to ship male characters who so much as smile at each other (and i don’t condemn that) but would never do the same for two women—even on the rare occasion that the ship is actually canon. i once wrote a wlw fanfic for a [predominantly straight] fandom, and received messages like this gem:

on the flip side of that, if there is a sapphic ship in canon or fanon, it is often fetishized and sexualised to a disturbing degree. there will be double the amount of nsfw art and fics, and ninety percent of it will be derogatory and fetishized as hell. having been actively involved in several fandoms over the past few years (and currently a content creator in one), i’ve seen instances of all this hundreds of times. people go crazy for mlm ships, but the second you say you ship/prefer a wlw ship, there’s always someone at the ready with, “i think all ships are great!” or “it’s not a contest” or “i prefer [insert m/m or m/f ship] actually” or “they’re my brotp!/why can’t you just let them be friends?”. not only do lesbians and wlw not get to have any rep in media, any rep that they try to create for themselves in fandom just gets attacked or ruined. this is so detrimental not only to all wlw, but especially to younger wlw who will end up being indoctrinated into this belief that their sexuality is something dirty, something that can never be tender and sweet but rather something that deserves to be preyed upon. 

building on that, let’s talk about engagement. i run an instagram account (where i have a significantly bigger following) as well as this blog for my fandom, where i post the content i create (mainly text posts). when i first started creating content, i made a lot for a relatively unpopular wlw ship, in which both girls are canonically romantically involved with a dude—though one of them is canonically pan. their canonical m/f ships are both very popular, and i noticed that my engagement was dropping every time i posted them, so i eventually just stopped. it wasn’t even a conscious decision; i merely resigned myself to the fact that the fandom didn’t want to see sapphic ships, and some people would even go as far as to condemn them. for reference, my instagram posts get an average of about 500 likes per post (popular ones usually exceeding 1k), but when i post this ship, my engagement drops to about 250 likes. similarly, my tumblr text posts have an average of about 140 notes per post (popular ones usually reaching up to 750), but my wlw content rarely surpasses 100. this just feeds the cycle of wlw never getting rep: if, like me, content creators become disincentivised by the lack of engagement with their sapphic content, they’re more likely to stop making/posting it, leading to further lack of rep—and when new content creators try to rectify that, they face the same problems. 

and then, of course, there’s the treatment of actual wlw in fandom. my best example of this is when my friend and i made an anti account on instagram (the first instagram anti account in that fandom), our bio saying something like “salty and bitter lesbians being salty and bitter”, and received an onslaught of lesbophobic insults and threats from angry stans within hours. (tw: r*pe) one commenter even went as far as to tell us that they wanted us to get r*ped. as well as this, i’ve seen so many instances of people using slurs against lesbians in arguments/in anons, often for no apparent reason other than they feel that they have the right. when i first mentioned i was a lesbian on instagram, my account only had about 200 followers, and within a day i lost 20. i also lose followers whenever i post f/f ships, not quite to that extent but enough for it to be noticeable, on top of the aforementioned engagement dips. in the face of all this adversity, i think a lot of wlw turn to mlm ships because they’re the closest thing we have to actual rep, but when we do we get accused of fetishizing them by the same people who fetishize us. there’s an endless list of double standards that non-wlw have been upholding for years, and i can firmly say that i’m really fucking sick of it. because of our sexuality, we will never be allowed to enjoy something without someone labelling it or us as dirty or otherwise problematic, when to them, the only problematic thing about us is that we aren’t pleasing men. 

as i mentioned before, the lack of rep for wlw in media is appallingly consistent, and part of that stems from tokenism. in a lot of modern mainstream media, you’ll have one, maybe two lgbt characters, and nine times out of ten those characters are white cis male gays. of course, there are exceptions to this, but generally, that’s it. script writers and authors (especially cishets) seem to have this mentality of, “oh, well, we gave them one, that’s sure to be enough!”, which means that on the off chance you do get your gay rep, the likelihood of also receiving wlw or any other kind of rep becomes practically non-existant. this belief that all marginalized groups are the same and that one represents all is what leads to misrepresentation on top of lack of rep, which is what makes tokenism so dangerous. if you treat your only gay character badly, you are essentially treating every single gay person badly in that universe. so not only is lesbophobia and disdain for wlw harmful to sapphic women via their exclusion in media, it’s also harming those minorities who do get rep. when people try to defend lesbophobic source material, that’s when fandom starts to get toxic. the need for critical thinking has never been more apparent and it has also never been less appeased—and wlw are getting hit hard by it, as always.

finally, a pretty big driving factor of lesbophobia is, ironically, lesbians. my lesbian friends and i often joke that though everyone seems to hate us, no one hates lesbians more than lesbians do. though i’d say it’s most prevalent on tumblr, i see traces of it all over the internet. the growth of alt right lesbian movements is not only reinforcing hatred for lesbians, but also reinforcing hatred for bi and pan women. here you have these terrible lesbians using their platforms to express their disgust for bi/pan women, for aces and aros, for trans women/nb lesbians, and people see them and say, “gosh, lesbians are just awful.” and just like that, all of us are evil. occasionally, lesbian blogs that i follow get put on terf blocklists for no other reason than the fact that they have “lesbian” in their bio. and the lesbians that actually deserve to be on those blocklists? they’re too busy spewing misinformation about trans women and bi women to care, boosted up by their alt right friends in an ever-expanding movement. i’ve found that this heavily influences fandom on tumblr, lesbians often getting branded as “biphobic” when they hc a female character as a lesbian rather than bi or pan. this criticism of both lesbians and wlw by lesbians and non-wlw alike only ever allows lesbophobia to grow, both in and out of fandom. that said, lesbians aren’t to blame for their own discrimination; rather, many of us have been conditioned into subconsciously endorsing it after spending our entire lives hearing heterosexual platitudes about lesbians and sapphic relationships. homophobic cishets are and always have been the nexus of this oppression—the only difference is that now they can hide behind alt right lesbians.

one thing has been made apparent to me throughout my time in fandom, and that thing is that no one likes to see men “underrepresented”. people hate sapphic ships and lesbians so much because there is no room for men, and men Do Not Like That. so, like the worms that they are, they slither their way in, be it through fetishization or condemnation of wlw characters and ships, and they ruin whatever good things we have going for us. the thing about worms, though, is that they’re easy enough to crush if you’re wearing the right shoes.

so to all my bi/pan gals and lesbian pals: put on your doc martens, because we’ve got ourselves some lesbophobes to stomp on. 

[your-turn-to-role]

Please talk to me about aro Fjord. 😭 I am in need of any and all ace/aro M9 content. I'd love to talk about aro-spec/ace!Caleb and ace! Caduceus

oh for sure, yeah!

i mean i'm someone who kinda hcs anyone who hasn't shown signs of being into people yet as aspec, usually aroace if i can

so for the longest time i just headcanoned all the m9 guys as aspec somewhere (and also essek, he's had comments about not really being interested in romance, so he's ours now. he's even ace colours!)

caleb i've been a little less sure on since liam confirmed on talks he was into both jester and essek, i still love aspec caleb headcanons (he's a relatable boy for a lot of reasons lets add another!), but since he's at least bi in some respect, i'm not clinging to that one, just so it won't ruin the story for me if he does end up with one of them. but if you wanna talk aro bi or bi ace or demi-bi caleb i am 100% on your team here!

(also while some people don't want to go near the broken narrative and that's valid, i think there's a lot you could do with aspec caleb hcs vis-a-vis him only having one relationship as a teenager bc he thinks that's just what you do when you find a girl you like/wanna hang out with, and then he skipped most of the time he would have had to figure that out, so coming to terms with it now would probably be a difficult thing, because it's hard to reconcile "am i just like this naturally" and "did i become this because of everything that happened to me", and caleb has a hard time finding a distinction between those two anyway? so there's a lot he still has to figure out)

fjord is another i've been hugely attached to since travis said on talks he doesn't like romance in his dnd characters? and while i'm a little worried he's gonna go back on that after his playlist came out, it's still the most solid evidence i've ever gotten for a character being aro (one day, someone's gonna write a canon aro character. one day), so his being aro is very very important to me

i'm down with ace fjord too if people have that hc, but that one's less of a big deal for me, though i will say all the attempts avantika made to hit on him and him just entirely stonewalling (at least until he needed to manipulate her and i'm pretty sure he was faking it for that one), was, big mood

(also like... fjord's story is hugely about changing himself to fit in with others' expectations, and not really knowing how to be himself because he's never met anyone like him, and that's a big aspec mood. we still have no media representation and no information about aromanticism or asexuality easily out there, we have to go digging for it, so a lot of us grow up just getting into relationships because we think that's what we're supposed to do, and it takes a while to realise that's not what we wanted. fjord could relate a lot to that i think)

caduceus is just. no social norms here. nothing to fight back against. don't need sex/romance, i'm good with having friends, it's all good :)

there hasn't really been any indication (other than people reading into things to support fjorclay) that caduceus is actually into anyone, and while i'm always a little nervous bc taliesin is much more comfortable playing a character who's into everyone than a character who's into no one, i will continue to hc cad as aroace for as long as physically possible!

(essek is just. while you were having relationships i studied dunamancy)

(who needs romance when you have treason)

[aro-culture-is]

hello! i just have some thoughts on stuff you said a couple days ago, feel free to disagree (or not even answer this). i’m super curious how you feel about this! you said 'I wouldn’t say “ suggesting aroace as a label was inherently SAM because it specifies sexual and romantic orientation” so much as explicitly saying so, but yes.' i understand what you mean but i don't know if i totally agree? i would say i primarily identify as aro ace... (1/? this is gonna take ages, my biggest apologies)

and i understand that using both aro and ace is very different than identifying as just one (and like you said, using both inherently subscribes to the sam). but at the same time my experiencing ‘neither sexual nor romantic attraction’ doesn’t feel ‘neither sexual nor romantic’ it is all one thing to me. like i hate framing aspec identities in terms of a ‘lack’ but to fully explain what i’m trying to say: i don’t feel a separate ‘lack’ of romantic and sexual attraction, it is all one ‘lack.' (2)

maybe something to help explain is while i use the term ‘aro ace’ for myself i mostly just refer to myself as aspec? like i like having a term that does not require me to separate out attraction into two different types or align myself with one side of the sam. the fact that i don’t consider myself to fall on the a-spectrum (or, i’m on one end of it) means this isn’t my core identity label (if asked i say my identity is ‘aro ace’ for specificity’s sake) but most of the time i just use aspec. (3)

like in my mind i can kinda envision 3 axes of non-sam identities: ace-only, aro-only, and general lack-of-attraction only?  aroace is what i have because of the sam and it’s the one i use generally but if there were a term that described this third axis that did not use the sam that’s the one i would use (again, aspec does the job here!  and maybe aspec is the answer for me). (4)

and maybe that is not non-sam enough and i’m missing the spirit of adopting a non-sam label!  perhaps the point is one aspect of the sam overriding the importance of the other ‘part’ of the sam label and having a way of specifying a general lack of attraction is too rooted in the ideas of sam for it to truly be a non-sam identity. (5)

also idk where to put this sentence but not to mention that people who might fall under the ‘aro ace’ identity tend to face pushback from people who do subscribe to the sam (usually for just identifying as ace, which is perceived as (and often criticized for) misrepresenting the ace identity/community). (6)

anyway this was all over the place (+ super long) but your post got me thinking about this and i’m super interested in your thoughts! feel free to decide i’m a pretentious asshole and disregard me entirely- i don’t even necessarily think i’m ‘right’, this is just me musing on how non-sam identities interact with the aroace identity. and as a non-sam aro i’m sure you’ve spent tons of time thinking about non-sam stuff so there’s probably lots here that’s missing the mark a bit. anyway thanks!(7/7)

bold line here so people know where my reply is lol

RIP me I typed out a reply and then tumblr suddenly decided me pressing backspace = go back a page. time to retype it all!

i understand that using both aro and ace is very different than identifying as just one (and like you said, using both inherently subscribes to the sam)

yes! I forget if I remembered to include it at the beginning of all this (like, the ask before the one you’re describing? I think? or maybe the one before that?) but I at least intended to include a note that I was excluding this position for simplicity. I didn’t feel comfortable trying to explain what an identity that I only knew of in theory might feel like. I super didn’t want to overstep and try to place y’all without seeing the personal piece.

i can kinda envision 3 axes of non-sam identities: ace-only, aro-only, and general lack-of-attraction only?  aroace is what i have because of the sam and it’s the one i use generally but if there were a term that described this third axis that did not use the sam that’s the one i would use

sounds right to me, overall. admittedly, having a different term than “aromantic” is the only reason I use the phrasing “non-SAM” aro usually, and while other terms exist this one hits better than the others to me and has more of a history. I’d describe more of my emotions on that, but tbh emotions are hard and I’d rather not right now. (and oh can I hear that Therapist “Hmm” noise right now, the one always followed by “and why do you think that is?”)

people who might fall under the ‘aro ace’ identity tend to face pushback from people who do subscribe to the sam (usually for just identifying as ace, which is perceived as (and often criticized for) misrepresenting the ace identity/community)

:/ that’s shitty. when I first joined aspec tumblr, I wouldn’t hesitate to say at all that the two IDs I saw the most rep for was aroaces and non-sam aces, though it was typically just phrased as asexual. this was, perhaps, very late 2012 into early 2013? but in fall of 2014 the exclus attacked and tbh I see more of the aspec community and queer community holding onto some of their takes than I have the energy to deal with. this definitely sounds like one of those holdovers (ie, they attacked for using and not using the SAM because they just didn’t want any aspec people at all; 100% could see the non-SAM attacks sticking more because this was also when I saw the boom of people using the SAM for alloace IDs)

this is just me musing on how non-sam identities interact with the aroace identity.

it’s a pretty solid musing, I can say that at least. I wouldn’t feel comfortable labeling it as a non-SAM ID for everyone who feels like aroace/aspec/no attractoin as a single ID fits them best, but I can definitely see your feelings about being non-SAM feeling similar to mine.

as a non-sam aro i’m sure you’ve spent tons of time thinking about non-sam stuff 

*nervous laughter*

but really though I struggle to describe my feelings so debates or discussions like this are most of my time spent thinking about non-sam stuff. I’m just in the position of being a “well-known” non-sam aro right now, and I try to answer things to the best of my ability. there’s not much of a community to get agreements or disagreements from so... I just do as I’ve always done. I just do my best to be honest with what I know and don’t know, what my thoughts and feelings are, and where I’m coming from. I don’t claim to be an expert in my identity so much as shouting into the void in hopes that the void will shout back.

fyi though that I’m also @just-aro for non-sam aro related things and some of my more general (non-submission) content.

[onthebirdroads]

The Doctor! (if that's too vague, choose your favourite incarnation)

Wow this turned out really long 😂 enjoy! (And watch out for that rant in the middle)

How I feel about them:

Absolutely love them. As a character they've got so many different facets, across different incarnations and within the same incarnation, and that really makes for some interesting storytelling. They can be so kind and caring, but if you go against them they'll turn on you, and sometimes when put under pressure they'll just completely snap and their internal moral compass will go absolutely haywire (see, for example: the "Time Lord Victorious" mode that 10 gets into in The Waters of Mars). That kinda thing always gives me the shivers and I love it. They're also like.. way more "evil" than they'd care to admit, in some incarnations absolutely happy stand by while someone or something else kills their adversary. Again, makes for some really interesting character stuff

Romantic ships:

None whatsoever. The Doctor is 100% aro in every incarnation, imho.

Non-romantic OTP:

I've been really really enjoying the emotionally devastating relationship between 13 and the Master. It's just.. hooooo boy that's the good shit 🍹🍸. The Doctor needs someone who can challenge them in every way, and the only person who can really do that is the Master. And tbh the Doctor is almost as messed up as their best enemy, they're just less directly destructive and sadistic. And I'm really loving Dhawan!Master's style (not just fashion sense but in everything). I've just been like 😱 😭 this whole time and I love it. (Also holy shit LOOMS ARE BASICALLY CANON NOW YALL! That whole story was emotionally devastating and I loved it.)

I also think 7 and Ace make an interesting pair, although most of that comes from 7 being a manipulative piece of shit to her, so not really an OTP... good stories though 😂

Other than that I mean, I really enjoyed the way Donna dealt with 10, and I'd love to maybe see more of Romana, bringing her down-to-earth logical ways to bear on the Doctor. (I looooove Romana II but she probably won't be returning in the TV show, maybe another incarnation?) It would also be cool to see Brax... I bet he's managed to survive all of the numerous apocalypses that have happened on Gallifrey over the centuries. (Again not really an OTP but ehh, it's my post I do what I want.)

Unpopular opinion:

The Doctor is 100% aro in every incarnation. Yes even 10, yes even 13, Th*smin shipping please fuck off.

(Rant incoming 😂 I could put up with the existence of Th*smin shipping if people would at least fucking tag stuff accurately so I can avoid it. Romance repulsion can be really really painful; I literally could not interact with the fandom at all during 13's first series because the shipping was absolutely overwhelming, and all of it was shipping this character whose aromanticism is really fucking close to my heart and very very important to me. Like, this is pretty much the one single heavily aro-coded almost-canon character in any popular franchises, we're grasping for crumbs here and it kills me. And people tagging random stuff as Th*smin for extra exposure really didn't help, cause it meant so much non-ship content was filtered too. Best case never-gonna-happen-widely scenario for this kind of thing—still marginally more probably than people not shipping them with companions in the first place—would be people actually tagging stuff like romance and kissing, as well as any specific ship tags, so that us romance-repulsed aros can safely and comfortably interact with the rest of the fandom. But I'm not gonna hold my breath. Endrant.)

(Oh lmao I forgot River existed for a hot minute there... that was really nice while it lasted.... tbh I generally pretend the whole of series 6 just didn't happen. But yeah River/Doctor is absolutely off the table too, as is romantic Thoschei.)

One thing I wish would happen/had happened in canon:

Some kind of explicit confirmation that the Doctor is essentially non-binary and aromantic, by human standards, throw in ADHD too and I'd probably hurt myself stimming with excitement and joy.

On the NB side of things, a Doctor who uses they pronouns would be nice; that could be addressed by having the TARDIS like, automatically correct the pronouns people use or something, and them being like "??? The words that I just said aren't the words I actually said???" and then some brief explanation involving the translation circuits.

With ADHD, perhaps a companion who's ADHD themself just being like "obviously you're an alien so it doesn't really work the same but damn you're like how ADHD humans are".

And for aro literally just some offhand comment about how they've never really understood the concept of romance and why humans seem so heavily affected by it and attached to it.

[ayy-spec]

Anything to Add?

The final question in this survey was a write-in section for people to leave any additional comments. 113 people responded.

Important/Particularly Interesting Comments

• I hope this goes well for you because you seem nice and if you have any advice for new to the community 15 year olds like me, don't be afraid to share because I'm trying to embrace my sexuality as much as possible but it can be hard when I don't know where to go or turn to to find what I'm supposed to do and where to ask questions and just fully embrass this part of me and it can be hard when I don't even know many if any aspecs so representation is great and it is helpful to hear your experiences and how you handle certain parts, so just keep doing what your doing because it is making a difference [note: 🥺🥺😭]

• i often consider myself more as just aroace rather than aro and ace seperately so i prefer seeing the blue and orange aroace flag over the individual aro and ace flags

• I don't really shorten my identity often with aroace, only when im feeling very romance repulsed and its been a while since I felt romantic attraction. I am a pan-demiromantic asexual. My pan label makes me feel more connected to the lgbt+ community bc it feels like my nonbinary and intersex status doesn't count either. I know I belong in the queer community, but the lgbt+ community is so sexual orientation focused.

• Thank you for having a wide variety of labels to choose from in the options!! I don't see the term aegoromantic very often on things, it feels nice to be known I guess haha

• Thank you for this, i recently started thinking about being in arospec and it was so relieving, all this time i thought something was wrong or maybe i was broken. I'm still trying to learn more about it, and I'm grateful for people willing to teach and help

• didn't realize I hadn't experienced sexual attraction until I finally did and was like "OH, no wonder all my other relationships felt like I was playing pretend"

• I dont often tell people I'm gray aroace. Not because of shame or it not being "as important" (I'm a gay trans dude) but I think because I just feel its a very intimate part of myself, as well as my romanticism and sexuality (in terms of like asexuality) feeling as though it doesn't always need a label. I'm fine just being myself most of the time, a lot of labels can be tricky for myself I think. I'm happy the label exists nonetheless though because Its nice to know I'm not the only one who feels like this.

• I'm queer! But if I'm getting down to the bones of it, I'm pan/ace. Still relearning how to be proud of that, after The Grand Clusterfuck years back.

• even though I would be considered to have an alloromantic orientation, alloace isn't really a term I feel any strong connection or attachment to

• i'd like to add that i do consider myself alloaro and use that label openly but i'd also not consider myself 100% allosexual. i'm questioning my sexuality but even if i do end up feeling more solidly ace-spec i'd still use the alloaro label

• Idk who else does this or if this is interesting enough to write down, but I thought I would! I use Aroace as a label. Other, smaller labels inside that would probably fit me better! Aroace feels too big, like it doesn't *really* define exactly who I am. But at the same time, I prefer using it because more people know what Aroace means (at least compared to myrromantic and myrsexual). I use Aroace so the public can define me. I don't typically use it around my close friends 'cause they already know my idiosyncrasies and where I really am. They already made their own definitions for me, so I don't have to make one for them!

• I'm still figuring myself out, so I leave myself at the blanket terms and hopefully everything'll work out in the end

The rest of the responses are below:

Comments Alerting Me About Typos (that I was then able to resolve)

• There's a typo in your "sexual orientation labels" question, because you have Aroflux listed and not Aceflux, but I didn't want to confuse things so I put Aceflux (which I do use) under Other. I also am polysexual (I flux between polysexual and asexual but I am always aegosexual) but didn't know if I should but it under Other anywhere since it's not an acespec label. I consider my polysexuality tied to me being aego/aceflux though, which is why I mention it here.

• the sexual orientations options are the same of the romantic ones ( for example, there's arovague and arospike in the sexual cathegory)

People Clarifying/Expounding Upon Their Own Identity/Experiences

·  to clarify: i'm unsure whether or not i am demi or aceflux; so i use graysexual since both labels technically fall under that as an umbrella term.

• I’m still a confused gorl and I really only know that I don’t like sex it sexual acts but I do like romantic and sensual acts

• Sex/romance repulsed and I have aesthetic attraction

• I'm also animesexual and fictosexual (and romantic I guess but I don't like using the SAM for myself).

• I have never seen most of these labels, haha, I expect one of them is the one I always forget that's for being aro due to past trauma but people always assume it's romantic/sexual trauma so I don't use it and thus have forgotten it...but that's the essay I'm not usually up for writing: was biromantic but then had several awful life events on top of each other and had a complete breakdown and have been aro since. Unclear if it's permanent but it's been 14 years now. [note: I believe this person is thinking of caedromantic]

• I tend to use the word ace more than asexual because it's shorter, but I don't feel more favorably about one than the other.

• i can't tell the difference between platonic vs romantic attraction, and am unsure if people i have "liked" in the past was romantic, platonic, or a fake stemming from peer pressure.

• Also Gender-Neutral/Agender

• I’m gray-aro but identify more with being biromantic even though I know I’m aro-spec. As for sexual orientation, I’m just completely ace xD

• The fact I'm still trying to figure out my gender makes it harder to pinpoint exactly what my orientations are :( but I usually say I'm queer, and if it's safe: Bi Ace, and if I can get more specific: biromantic grey-asexual

• I also use a platonic label (biplatonic). I use it not in a friendship way, but more like in a QPR way.

• Thank you for doing this! My identity on the aro/ace spectrums has shifted a lot over the years and while I’ve just settled on aroace and queer for the most part, this community is so diverse and under appreciated. People who find joy in/identify with micro-identities are valid and deserve representation!

• I'm still figuring out my romantic orientation but it's looking less allo by the day lmao

• My romantic label is very fluid, but in terms of sexual labels, very sex repulsed Asexual

• Content with just Aspec cause it's difficult to pinpoint anything but cool with both asexual/ace and aromantic/aro

• I think of my romantic orientation as halfway between aromantic and homoromantic

• I'm a polyamorous ace, if there'd be a way to include that sometimes that'd be neat :)

• I am still questioning my identity

• I used to identify as 100% ace but now I have no idea other than that I seem to be pan-ace in some way shape or form so my identity is ???people???

• Sex/romance repulsed and I have aesthetic attraction

• to clarify: i'm unsure whether or not i am demi or aceflux; so i use graysexual since both labels technically fall under that as an umbrella term.

Queer Rights

• Trans rights, baybee 🤠🦂

• I just hope a-spec and aro-spec people will experience less negativity and hate this year <3

• Aspec rights!!

• aspec rights, baby

People Being Nice to Me  (I appreciated this thank you everyone!!)

·  :)

• Have a good day

• Uhhh, cool survey, nice to see a lot of labels.... good job! Nothing I have to add, it was great

• Have fun chief, thank you for your work

• Thank you for creating!

• thanks for the survey! I don't know too many aspec in person so I love participating in things like this about the ace/aro community!

• Thank you for what you’re doing

• just hi :)

• thanks!!

• I really love your blog! Reading your posts always makes me happy :) [note: thank you!]

• Good luck, have a nice day !

• I hope you're having a good day :)

• you're lived and valid af!! have a great day!!!

• Thank you for all your hard work i really appreciate it ☺️

• Drink some water Right Now OP

• Nope, :> hope the best for you.

• Cool survey, 10/10 would survey again.

• 💛

• Have a nice day uwu

• Nope! Have a nice day!

• Thank you for making pride flag edits! They're really nice! [note: thank you!!]

• nope, but this is really cool!!

• ❤️

• Have a good day.

• I think this survey idea is super cool! Definitely a great way to see what sort of aspec people are on tumblr :)

• You are doing the lords work

• Thank you for asking us.

• good luck!

• This is really cute idea :)

• I hope you're having a nice day!

• Good luck in your endevours!

• Thank you for making our community visible!

• Have a good day :3

• Have a good day!!

• Keep doing great stuff!

• Thank you for all the positivity I get from your blog! It's super helpful, keep it up :) [note: thank you!!]

• thanks for doing this. recognition is always nice

• Have fun <3

• Lots of love 💛

• This is a cool project, thanks for doing it and good luck! :)

People Saying They Love Me (and I love you, random a-specs)

·  i love you OP!!!!!

• love you, hope you have a great day

An A-Spec Person Being Rude to Other A-Specs

• If you enjoy sex with your romantic partner then you are not asexual

A Person Who Is Not A-Spec Being Rude To A-Specs

• sweetie im sorry that you're so insecure that you feel like you have to make up new identities to feel better about yourself. if you are a lesbian or bisexual please know that you are welcome in the community, but other than that making thousands of microlabels like this makes a huge joke out of what was once an important and respected group. nobody takes us seriously anymore because of this shit. does labelling your identity like this really help you with anything? demisexual and fraysexual and all this are just fancy words for normal human feelings that everyone has. there is no need to microlabel it.

Other

· [variations of “no” (12)]

• not sure that helps lmao but still hope it does. all the best

• Axolotls (or as I like to call them, asexulotls) are amazing and I love them [Note: the man in question]

• Sorry, I can't remember the names of any blogs that do edits

• Ok random but the colors of the aro/ace flag? The blue and orange one? They’re gorgeous.

• I'm not so sure if I should use the aroace flag, I feel comfortable using both aro and ace flags, but I don't like the colors for the aroace flag :c [note: these are in chronological order, it’s a total coincidence that these comments are together]

• Curious to see where the survey goes

• It would be cool if you could also do some aplatonic-spectrum edits!

• there were fully half of the terms on that list that i had never even seen before. like, everything below litho down to no label was entirely new to me. at some point i will look into those! (but not right now, my brain is full enough at the moment)

• actually had to look up the majority of these orientations. Thank you for the opportunity to learn!

• Gonna reblog and follow and hopefully learn a bit more, about others and myself

Note: The only comment that is not listed in order is the first comment, which I put at the top because I found it the most important. It’s so important that kids and teens have space to explore their identity and learn about themselves. The reason I made this blog in the first place was because I was 19 and working on figuring out my gender and sexuality. Now that I’m a bit older and understand things better, I’m so glad that I’m able to help people in this way. 

I make it a point to be very openly queer in my life and at work because I need LGBTQ+ people, especially youths, to know that we’re here. I’m lucky that I live somewhere that I can be visibly queer and speak about it openly. We are everywhere, and there’s more of us than you think!

Something that I really like about the comments at the top is that they show how diverse we are, and how people use words differently. Some people feel like they’re more aroace than aromantic and asexual separately, and others consider their romantic and sexual orientations to be completely different things.

I definitely relate to the person who identifies are myrromantic and myrsexual with their friends but just says aroace when speaking with people they don’t know as well. I believe a lot of people use different words depending on who they’re speaking with.

[randomwordsandstormydays]

10 Questions Meme

I was tagged by both @its-sixxers and @dangernoodleofhell thank you both!!

Rules: Answer these questions, then create 10 new ones and tag 10 people. Since I was tagged twice, I’ll answer all the questions in this post, that way I only have to think of 10 questions instead of 20. Hah!

Questions from @its-sixxers

1. If you could have any kind of art, what would you get? Honestly? There’s some pretty dope ass Fallout fanart out there being sold on etsy, and if I had the money I would totally buy them and plaster them all over my apartment.

2. What’s your favorite MET gala outfit? I have never seen the MET gala, actually, so I don’t know!

3. If you never had to worry about rules or practicality/upkeep, what kind of hair would you have? I’d keep my same haircut, it’s shorter than a pixie, but longer than a military cut. I’m growing it out right now, but that’s mostly because of all the upkeep.

4. Who’d you have a celebrity crush on as a preteen? (If you’re aro/ace or didn’t have one - what band were you obsessed with?) I was in love with Samwise from Lord of The Rings, him and Aragon. Do they count? Lol.

5. Did you ever follow an embarrassing fad/trend? I was kinda scene in high school - dark clothes, lots of bracelets, that kind of thing, so yeah...

6. Favorite musical (If you hate musicals you are free to rant about how terrible they are here)? Les Mis or Hamilton.

7. First social media you remember using (Could be forums, BBS, whatever)? There was a site called my Yearbook that I had for a while until new ownership took over and made it a dating site.

8. Most nostalgic piece of media? Princess Bride. I love it, and it always makes me safe, like I’m a kid again.

9. Favorite outdoor activity? Soccer. I played for 11 years and loved it so much.

10. Do you have a guilty pleasure? Not really? I guess writing Fanfic, since it’s not something I share with most people I know IRL.

///

@dangernoodleofhell‘s questions

1.Is there a especial meaning behind your username or just keysmashed? Not really? My first one was Tords-Girl and it was for Eddsworld, but this one is just??? Fanciful? Idk man.

2.You can cancel 1 (ONE) person. For good. Who do you choose? My dad’s wife.

3. A skill you have and no one expected it? I am really fucking good at Beatsaber on the oculus quest.

4.How are you keeping sane while the plague ravages the earth? Mostly. I had already planned on doing literally nothing at all for the month of March, since I just left my last job and needed some recoup time. But now I can’t apply for the job I’ve been waiting for because of the Pause and I’m a little stir crazy.

5.Favorite comfort drink/food? Hot cheetos for food. Peppermint tea with hella sugar for drink.

6.One of your OCs just became real, how fucked are you and the rest of the world? I closed my eyes and pointed at my list of OC, and I pointed at Liam Harper. He’s an ex-courser from the Institue who escaped and ran to the Railroad for a memory wipe. Too bad it fails and he’s trapped between two different memories of the same life. This turns him pretty violent as he copes with his collapsing mind... so as long as you stay away from him you’re probably fine.

7.It’s there a thing/trend you like but it’s labled as “cringe”? Fanfic? Hah! But no, not really? I do listen to Minecraft and other videogame parody songs, but that’s pretty lowkey.

8.Do you make any kind of research before write/draw/create something? How much? Not at all! I just... write. I usually do an outline, just word vomit all over the place. I’ll do minor research if it’s something I’m not familiar with, but I mostly write what I know.

9.You can live in any book/show/movie universe. Which will be (Fan content counts too)? I would die right away, but Fallout 4. I’d totally love to meet all my favorites in real life. That or The 100, shit is crazy and I’d love to experience it first hand.

10. Aren’t you tired of go apeshit? Don’t you want to be nice? I have yet to go apeshit, so no, I’m sick of being nice.

///

I’m tagging @kvltprince @randomfuzzbunny @crenarei @cramsicle and you questions are:

1. What's your favorite piece of your own content (fanart, fanfic, tv/movie edits, etc)?

2. If you could have any pet, without requirements for space or food, what would it be?

3. What’s your favorite “struggle meal” or “quarantine meal”?

4. Quick you’ve been teleported into last last movie you watched - what is it, and what do you do first?

5. Block ramen or cup ramen?

6. Have you seen that new hype show, Tiger King, if so, what’s your honest opinion?

7. What’s a piece of media you love, but hate the fandom of?

8. Books or comics/manga?

9. 

What’s the worst video game you’ve ever played (if you don’t play - what’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen)?

10. Song you could listen to on repeat and never get tired of?

[greed-the-dorkalicious]

Actually, you know what? I’m gonna come right out and say it. The FMA fandom is blatantly arophobic, and I’m tired of it. No, maybe it’s not as bad as some other fandoms (particularly the one that starts with a V and ends in Oltron), but enough to piss me off. Let me explain why.

The FMA fandom is deeply entrenched in shipping as being the default. It’s generally assumed that if you’re not into pairing A, you must be into pairing B, and vice versa. I’ve even seen posts along the lines of “Why would anyone be into FMA if not for (insert pairing here)?”, which, while generally innocent jokes not meant to be taken 100% seriously, are still hurtful to aros (particularly those of us who are romance repulsed). 

Of the 14,332 FMA fics on AO3 as of writing this post, 4,813 of them are tagged as gen. If you filter out fics that are also tagged with M/F, M/M, F/F, multi, or other, that number drops to 3685. This means that of all the FMA fics currently on AO3, only about 25% are accessible to people not interested in romance- And that’s not even accounting for improperly tagged fics, or filtering out crossovers for those who aren’t interested in those either.

I pretty much never see aro headcanons (or any sort of aspec headcanon, for that matter) from anyone other than me, or other aros. When I talk about my aro headcanons, while they’re not always outright rejected, they’re not particularly enthusiastically welcomed either. Usually, the only followers of mine who reblog such posts are people who are already in some way aspec themselves, or have been at some point questioning aspec. My alloromantic, allosexual followers don’t like to acknowledge my identity.

Al, the only main character to not have a love interest from early on in FMA history (May didn’t start showing interest in Al until about halfway through the series, and most major pairings have been around since the 03 days) is often overlooked. Despite being a protagonist and the initial driving force of the plot, he’s rarely the center of fandom discussion or content. When he does appear, he’s often pushed into the role of wingman for other characters, or the focus is on his relationship with May- Despite the fact that in canon, he’s at best been shown to sort of ignore her romantic advances, and at worst been pretty uncomfortable with them. I am sincerely not trying to hate on May here, nor people who ship her with Al. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to ship them, and I do think May is a genuinely really cool and badass character aside from her relationship with Al. But am I really the only one made uncomfortable by how much people ship them, given the way she treats him in canon? She’s very pushy, often refers to him as “her” Alphonse, and has even gone so far as to get angry at him for “cheating” on her just by hanging out with a close friend who’s also a girl. I am not trying to demonize May, I really do like her, but... I mean, imagine if Al were a girl and May were a boy. Would this be remotely acceptable? No. By the way, there are currently 4261 fics on AO3 tagged with Alphonse Elric. This means that less than 30% of all FMA fics on AO3 feature Al, THE GODDAMN DEUTERAGONIST OF THE SERIES. If you only include gen fics, that number drops to 1,817, or a mere 12% of all FMA fics on AO3. That’s right, only about 12% of FMA fics on AO3 feature Al, one of the series protagonists, without including a romantic pairing. Sure, maybe people just don’t like Al- But I definitely find it suspicious that the main character who isn’t involved in a popular pairing is the one to get this treatment.

Many of my FMA mutuals (and I’m not going to name any specific names, because I’m not trying to single out any individual and I do genuinely love all my FMA mutuals and I believe they don’t mean any harm, and also because there’s just too many to list at this point) continue to reblog or even produce aphobic dogwhistles, such as posts that include lots of different LGBTQ+ identities but specifically and deliberately do not include aros and aces (or worse, posts that only talk about L, G, B, T specifically), posts that use aspec identities or issues as a punchline, or posts made by aphobic bloggers. A lot of FMA fans also seem to identify as “neutral on the discourse”, which... While I can see why they might think that’s the best way to avoid hurting anyone, it’s really not. Saying that you’re “neutral on the discourse” does not signify to aspecs that you mean us no harm. In fact, it usually makes us distrust you. Exclusionists have done a huge amount of harm to aspecs; They deliberately try to erase us, harass us, belittle us, and for those of us who do have some other LGBTQ+ identity (such as me, a bisexual aro), they make us feel extremely unwelcome in our own community and like we’re not LGBTQ+ “enough”. Saying that you’re “neutral” on the discourse is saying that you do not feel a need to condemn such behavior, or to extend a welcoming hand to your aspec siblings. In the wise words of They Might Be Giants, can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding. While I understand that many of you may be afraid of receiving hate for supporting aspecs... I mean, come on. Those of us who are aspec cannot choose to be “neutral” on our own existence- We have to either repress our own identities, or deal with the consequences. If an allo gets anon hate for supporting aspecs, they’re still not attacking you directly. If aspecs get anon hate, they’re saying they want us, specifically, gone. Are you really so afraid to take one or two hits that you’re willing to sit by and let us get mistreated?

Oh also, this is just talking about the FMA bloggers I’ve seen who are not blatantly aphobic. God only knows how many people I’ve blocked for outright posting shit about how much they hate aspecs, or trying to tell me that the discrimination, erasure, alienation, dehumanization, and harassment I face aren’t real. I’m only addressing the parts of the fandom at this point that try to pretend they’re not aphobic/arophobic. There are plenty of FMA fans who are very clearly, deliberately, and outwardly aphobic.

I realize this post may piss people off. It may make me sound whiny, or accusatory. But you know what? FMA means more to me than any other story. FMA is what got me through everything when I was a young teen struggling with feeling inhuman and alone for being aromantic (though I didn’t have a word for it at the time- I simply thought I was broken). I’ve poured my heart and soul into FMA-Facts since 2015, and been involved in the fandom since 2009. Isn’t it time I start getting something in return?

Why should I continue to lie down and let other members of a community that’s supposed to be my safe space just walk all over me? Why should I have to sit down and shut up and bite my tongue rather than be so demanding as to ask for basic respect? I’m tired of being treated like this. I’m tired of seeing my community get treated like this. I’m tired of remembering the misery I went through as a young aro in the FMA fandom who didn’t have a support system, and knowing that little has changed since then, and knowing that there are likely still aros in the FMA fandom going through what I did.

Stop silencing me. Stop perpetuating this shit. Start treating aros like human beings who are worth celebrating.

[aroworlds]

I just want to let you all know that my health still isn’t good: I spent awareness week struggling with insomnia (not to mention before and now after) and trying to cope with making content for it while operating on almost no sleep just about broke me. I’m glad I did it, but I’ve spent this week trying to recover from it, and I struggle to find the energy needed to talk to people when I’m that worn out.

Right now, I’m trying to figure out more about transition options and support as a queer, transgender person, since it’s been made clear to me that my current environment is not ever going to be truly supportive. This week I had a really good conversation with my GP so my new pronouns are as officially on the system as they can be (with a system that doesn’t really support it, but at least referrals will correctly refer to me) and a conversation about my queerness that was summed up as “sexual attraction irrespective of gender, romantic attraction to nobody, no gender”. It’s not completely accurate because you all know I’m abrosexual, but given that I mostly use queer like a safety blanket in offline conversations, it’s as accurate as I get to someone who doesn’t already know me. I’m looking for a new psychologist, and there’s a few queer-centred clinics in my state’s capital (Melbourne, Australia) I’ll be checking out.

The extreme degree of lack of sleep is almost certainty a response to everything that’s happened this year with regards the incredible invalidation from my former psychologist and family, but it’s making it hard. If autism makes a lot of the above difficult, insomniac autistic cranks the playing level right up!

I’ve been thinking about the direction of this blog, since I would like to open up the ask box again. The problem is that this blog was becoming a little more community-conversation-support-and-validation than is easy for me to handle. It takes a lot of spoons to be available to provide that kind of response and support, and there is always going to be a greater need for it than I am able to provide. To be frank, it’s overwhelming to me to constantly see it in my inbox and my messages, and that’s not something I well handle as an autistic.

I’m a creative. I write, I sew, I scrapbook, I design, I make. I’m hampered by my disabilities and an inability to have or afford real workarounds in terms of accessibility aids, but as much as I am able to, I make things. I was quietly proud of myself during awareness week for being able to get past the “I can’t do it perfectly so why do it at all” tendency of mine to make pride-related pieces that weren’t perfect (lack of tape, time, editing, fabric, marker pens) but still existed, as that’s something hard for me. And it meant the world to me to see some of those pieces get likes and reblogs!

My highest shape of activism is always going to be creative media, yet this blog, combined with the limitations of my disabilities, was making it harder for me to do that. It’s not coincidental that I’m able to write more stories with the ask box closed!

The other problem is that a lot of the conversations I was getting more concerned aro-ace folks, aro-ace experiences and aro-ace relationships to the aro-spec, ace-spec and a-spec communities. I’m not saying that you don’t need or deserve the support, and it is by no means wrong that anyone sought this out, but I felt like I was providing more reassurance to folks with issues that don’t impact me in quite the same way, without the time to talk about my own needs (because I am disabled, my spoons are limited and I never had the ability to do both the way I wanted). That felt like I was working more to support other people than I was to support myself; my activism slowly moved further and further away from my own needs in the aro-spec and a-spec communities.

I hope folks appreciate that providing reassurance, validation and support to fellow community members is a lot of work--something that takes a lot of time, a lot of physical ability, a lot of physical energy, a lot of emotional ability, and a lot of emotional energy. It’s work, it’s skilled work, and it’s hard work--something I don’t think we always stop and acknowledge in activist spaces where the need of people to be supported is sometimes pushed ahead of the ability for people to provide it. Particularly when the people who are doing this work are unpaid, often unsupported in their providing of this work while at the same time being applauded for it, and have to face a never-ending need for it should they begin to offer it.

I’ve had asks that have distressed and triggered me, asks that need all the empathy and validation I can provide but at the same time distress me to the point where I can’t cope myself. Where do I go to talk about that? Where do I go to find help? I can’t write a post about it here; that would hurt the person who needs help and has done nothing wrong in seeking it. Psychologists see other psychologists for support, but we have a grassroots situation where folks are providing nearly the same sort of work on an untrained, volunteer basis, for a community in incredibly desperate need of it and can’t actually go to a psychologist who doesn’t understand aromanticism, without any kind of support network ourselves.

Without that, it’s very difficult not to succumb to overwhelm and burnout ... and for much the same reasons folks came to my ask box, I can’t easily see a psychologist myself for coping with this, or afford to do so as frequently as I need even if/when I do find someone supportive.

I think a good thing for the aro-spec community to discuss would be the ways we can support other community members in their community-support-and-community-building activities, in terms of making sure that the people who are working to build our communities are physically and emotionally safe, have spaces where we can discuss the challenges and problems in providing community support--in the same way psychologists also have these support networks--and have their labour acknowledged in the sense of our promoting their PayPal, Ko-fi and Patreon accounts (it’s hard to manage the emotional work of providing deserved support for our own when we’re panicking over having $5 in our bank accounts and a $100 bill to pay next month). We shouldn’t be taking it for granted that the people who are helping prop us up can do so unaided, not when we all know the struggles we face in a capitalist, amatonormative world. Let’s please acknowledge this, not just for me but for every other aro-spec who is putting their works out in posts, answering asks and creating the content we need and appreciate.

Let’s do our best to support the people who are supporting us and have open conversations about the struggles and stresses of activism, because I honestly feel that the only options for me include shutting down the inbox forever, being seen as selfish and demanding if I talk about the problems of being a source of support because I’m supposed to be helping people, quitting the blog entirely, or struggling through it all until I shatter.

In the meantime, though, as a disabled aro-spec, I have to draw a line.

For me, this comes back to what I want to do--run a blog about aro-spec creativity while making more original aro-spec creative content--and activism that directly concerns and impacts me. That means, specifically, allo-aro activism, because I’m increasingly finding a disconnect between general aro-spec approaches and my own needs. Activism for aro generally isn’t resulting in a-spec spaces that feel safe for me, and that’s where I want to direct my conversations.

For this blog, @aroworlds, I’d like the ask box to be an easy way folks can recommend media, discuss content, squee about something cool they read/saw/heard/found, share pride merch, give their thoughts on something with regards representation or creativity. I won’t say that I won’t make my own posts about activism here and there, but I’d like to get back to a focus on creativity. I am asking, therefore, that people please keep messages, submissions and asks to topics of aro-spec creativity and creative media. I am no longer taking support-providing asks, community information asks or community terminology asks on this blog.

For my other blog, @alloaroworlds, I’m happy to have more conversations about aro-spec community issues, identity experiences and creative media as concerns allo-aros. This is where I want to focus my activism outside of creative media, and this is where I want to have community-issue conversations. I’m not yet at a point where I’m really able to provide much in the way of emotional support, but if I ever get my life to a point where I can, that’s where I’ll be providing it. In the meantime, though, let’s talk the aro-spec and a-spec communities and where allo-aros fit into them--and anything else allo-aros want to talk about.

Thank you so much for reading this monster of a post, my lovely followers. I won’t be opening up the ask box here today or even this week, but I will hope to be soon. Because I really do miss folks telling me about something cool they’ve found, and I hope we can get back to that and other projects and discussions focusing on aro-spec creativity.

In the meantime, if folks could wish for me a week where I sleep every night, I would be exceptionally grateful!

[divagonzo]

I don't understand why some prioritise romantic love so much in fiction. Like in fics, Ron usually says something like Hermione is the one he loves most. And I don't get it? He loves her more than his parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, HARRY, and even his children????? Same with Harry, he usually mentions how Ginny is the most important person in his life, and I can't help but think "what about Ron???? What about your children??" Why does love have to be measured and ranked all the time?

‘Ello Nonnie. I hope you don’t mind while I’m tucking into some homemade poutine right now….

I’m going to assume you’re one of my Aces by the wording you used in this ask. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit to it later.

Under a Read More ‘cause this got long fast.

Humans are quite fickle in that they want labels, boxes, sorting, prioritizing, and compartmentalizing. They, in general, are more comfortable by being able to sort these issues out and categorize them by personal importance. So thus, it’s easier to mention that, for most allosexuals, that Romantic love is prioritized (and sometimes also vilified, too.)

Ask 100 people and you’ll have a list of 100 different ordered priorities for them.

In the Grand Scheme of things, yes, romantic love is considered the paragon, the highest priority. It’s the highest if you fit a very narrow scope of such things. Those priorities get a bit wonky when you aren’t that narrow scope person. Those who are Ace… or Aro…. maybe not in a romantic relationship… wouldn’t necessarily make romantic love their priority.

Most people, including writers, won’t specify how someone loves one another. Some could be construed as laziness but it’s more of an unwritten social construct that “romantic love is the priority” especially if it is with people who are partnered off. (I’m intentionally avoiding Polyamory on this issue because, so I understand it, the dynamics are wholly different and I’m going broad brush here.)

But let’s get to brass broomhandles here… we’re talking Ron Weasley, the one who has so many spoons and so much love in his heart and soul that not even powerful dark magic can keep him shut up. This is the lad who went in harms way repeatedly to protect his friends and family.

So for him to say he loves Hermione the most, part of it probably is how he is feeling in that particular moment but also it’s a social expectation in that you love your partner just that much.

It’s bollocks. Love can be a long-term feeling but more importantly, it’s a choice to feel this way. It’s not always blazing fire passion. Sometimes, it’s in the little embers of “Have a great day,” “Thinking of you,” and “Here’s a small bauble for you ‘cause  I thought you’d like it.”

I won’t get into my own situation (but will talk later if anyone is interested) but suffice to say, for many people, their spouse/romantic partner is a priority but not necessarily the only one you do love.

This is especially true for those who ascribe to the mindset that there are different forms of love, all of which are vital, healthy, and important to a person.

They are, listed below,

“Eros” or Erotic Love. The first kind of love is Eros, which is named after the Greek god of love and fertility. …

“Philia” or Affectionate Love. …

“Storge” or Familiar Love. …

“Ludus” or Playful Love. …

“Mania” or Obsessive Love. …

“Pragma” or Enduring Love. …

“Philautia” or Self Love. …

“Agape” or Selfless Love.

So let’s go down the list here….

Eros: Love for your partner. For Ron, That’s Hermione (or those who say Harry, that’s good too. YMMV.) He’d say this probably in a moment to reassure Hermione, to let her know he’s not leaving her, he’s there (like she just had a nightmare - whatever.) This doesn’t discount that he loves his parents, his siblings, especially Harry, probably Neville too *and Luna especially* but this particular flavor of love would be focused on his romantic partner. (AKA Hermione.)  He’s chosen his one and focusing on his own partner and their needs. (And better be hopefully reciprocated from their partner.)

Philia: Affectionate Love. This could be for Luna, for Harry, for pretty much anyone that Ron feels especially close to without feeling the need to engage in (adult behaviors behind closed doors). Yes, there are plenty of people who engage in Philia with people whom they are not married to. I’ve got quite a few who fill this category. (And being a Dragon with trust issues, this is huge.)

Storge: Familial Love. This is for his siblings, parents, nephews, and nieces, maybe even cousin Barny. The bonds are there, they bind, and it’s a welcome feeling to spend time with them. You don’t want to necessarily want to be overly affectionate with them (limits are probably a Bro Hug, maybe a kiss on the cheek if it’s Mom or Dad) - and no further. (Anything further is greatly frowned upon in Western Society.)

Ludus - playful love can be with kids by enjoying the time spent with them. It’s silliness and pranking and being goofy.

Mania - in short, the Potions Professor for Ms. Evans. #enoughsaid

Pragma - enduring love. This is the big one for me and probably Ron, too. It’s those who are ride or die, be there on your worst day or your best, and fight by your side or celebrate living another day. It’s the one you’re sitting at a table when you’re 80 playing chess because they are still rubbish at it but it’s time spent together and that’s wonderful. It’s a quiet contentment with your partner, with no need to fill the quiet space but enjoying the time spent with them.

Philautia - self-love. (No, not that. I won’t get into the grotty bits of this.) (This is ace safe) but the big point here is that you’re content with who you are and are comfortable in your skin, with your well-being, welfare, and how life is going. It’s that you don’t want to check out early and if you were snatched away you’d be madder than a wet moggie on Sunday.

Agape: Sacrificial Love. See Harry J Potter. But aside that, I’d say Ron Weasley falls into this one particular, especially with those who he is closest to, like Harry and Hermione. There are numerous examples in the books where he puts his own safety and welfare at the back of the line, looking out for his best friends and siblings and more. His martyr complex did drive much of it, especially with his rubbish self-worth by the end of the BoH, but I think that had anything happened to H or H, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.  Rather he pay the price and neither of the others.

So, in short? There are numerous examples of all 8 forms of love and it really depends on the person what they value the most. The thing is, most people won’t read the gen fic that focuses on the other forms of love (aka in need of fluff) besides Eros or Philios. But then those of us who fall into the 1% would - but that’s where we need to write our own stories and tales, so we can focus on the other forms of love besides Eros.

But there’s also the aspects of a personal love language, in how you show these forms of affection for someone. Ron? Loves his wife, his kids, his best mate, his siblings, his family. All receive the love from him but it’s different flavors of it. But since this is fic, it’s focused on Eros.

But that shouldn’t discount that other forms of love are vital and healthy and necessary.

[homestucky]

ok time to do a sort of a vent post  which i may regret and delete but i got lotso thoughts

i been doin a lot of my classic Lindsaylohac Self Indulgent Navel Gazing(TM) because obviously, 

and anyways in this time i been trying to figure myself out a bit. ive probably already ranted about this but anyways. im kind of feeling like maybe im aromantic and asexual altho im still not 100% but its just rlly made me have some interesting revelations

and i know theres a lot of discourse atm about ace stuff and honestly im not commenting on any of that (for one thing its not like theres one big idea being debated there, from what i can see theres loads of different questions and issues so i dont know how people can take such confident stances... seems like theres no clear cut like “sides” so to speak, just like........... a big mess)

ANYWAYS

im kind of freaked out by it all, just because i feel like ive just sort of realised how much about attraction that i never knew because no one ever explains it because youre meant to just feel it at some point and thats how you know BUT I DONT KNOW and i need someone to tell me because i dont understand it and i only recently realised how badly i dont understand it like ive been on forums with a bunch of aroace people and we were all being like ‘woa guys i just found out that romantic feelings are meant to feel DIFFERENT to friendship, guess i might be aro too lol’ and a bunch of other people responding like wait WHAT is that how its meant to feel????? nobody ever told me that!!! 

and i just

hhh

at the moment theres a bit of tumblr content making fun of ace people a little like people saying that being on the ace spectrum doesnt exist because thats just called ‘not sleeping with everyone you see lol’ and other stuff but like this is legit.. this is different to ‘having standards’ or ‘waiting for the right person’ or any decision like that.. this feels at least at the moment like im built to have zero comprehension for anything involving relationships or attraction. it feels like a rlly important distinction to me. like its not a choice im making.. i feel colour blind

dont get me wrong i know i am a privileged person in a lot of ways. and while i dont think i feel like i can call myself het, im not about to try and muscle in on the lgbt community, or attempt use that as a get out of jail free card so i can.. like, hide ignorance or prejudice behind ‘im not het, so i cant be problematic!’. and im certainly not about to start saying im being oppressed by gay ppl or something stupid like that, im not. first and foremost when it comes to sexuality n identity politics i want to listen and to be a good ally because my sexuality doesnt have prejudice against it directly as much as it just isnt really discussed. which has its own problems sure, but ykno. 

i wuld kind of dig it if asexuality and aromanticism were more widely talked abt or represented at least so people know what it is in case thats what they are because obviously a) its just nice to see but mainly b) i and many other people like me im sure have gotten myself into situations or almost gotten myself into situations because i didnt understand them or didnt understand that what i was feeling wasnt ‘feelings’. because otherwise u can just sort of.. end up doing what you think a ‘normal’ person would do. and it sort of sucks and is confusing

nd by representation i do NOT mean white men who are depicted as highly intellectual, cold, alien, or robotic, who’ve like, ‘deleted’ sexuality for efficiency, but then always ALWAYS still end up somehow having an implied relationship with ONE SPECIAL WOMAN because shes just SO SPECIAL he has to make an exception because thats nothing. thats useless. stop.

so basically in conclusion heternormativity sucks for everyone and i want it to be destroyed

[winterywitch]

anyway heres a summary of my discourse beliefves:

cishet aces/aros do not belong in gay spaces, bi spaces, lesbian spaces or trans spaces

for me my whole life the LGBT community has been more than that. my perspective is not that of some sad brainwashed child, forced into being more ~tolerant~ than i should be. i genuinely believe and have always believed the LGBT community is more than that, and im not just gonna drop that anytime soon, because i dont think the right to only consider the LGBT community as for “SGA and trans” people is liberation.

therefore cishet aces/aros belong in ace/aro spaces, which for me, count as LGBT.

but not gay, bi, lesbian or trans spaces.

there will be overlap because they are LGBT. but no, cishet aces/aros should have no claim to anything specifically for the L, G, B or T of the community.

for me the community is

Lesbians

Gay men

Bisexuals [SGA or not - as an SGA bi person, i get to speak on this.

Pansexuals

Trans people

Nonbinary people [counting agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, etc. non-cis, non-binary identities]

Intersex people (of course should they want to - the point of this list isn't YOU HAVE TO BE LGBT it's You Can Be Included)

Queer people [anyone who isn't cis or isn't het, including aroace people. non sga bi people im a little iffy on re: them 'reclaiming' queer]

Allies [i think this is important for people in the closet, as long as we dont let cishets get too big for their britches]

Aroaces

and hell, here’s a + to include anything i might have forgotten

aroaces are not functionally cishet.

straight privilege is straight privilege. it isnt not-homophobia privilege. to experience straight privilege you must be straight.

they definitely benefit from not experiencing homophobia. they can be absolute dumbasses abt homophobia for that exact reason.

but they dont experience straight privilege, because they’re not straight. that is all straight privilege has ever meant for me in my LGBT community.

cishet aces are cishet, and also aces. this means they benefit from cis privilege and straight privilege, but aphobia weighs down that straight privilege because they dont perform straightness in the Right way. i dont believe this necessarily makes them systemically oppressed the same way we are. but i dont believe aro or ace identities are privileged either.

there is no coherent Ace Community boogieman that is unanimously a bunch of homophobic, transphobic, racist jackasses, and if you believe that, you are a complete dumbass

yeah, the ace community is comprised of white cishets but, im gonna wager even more commonly, its comprised of literally every LGBT identity and race you can imagine. the ace community is not the white cishet community. it’s the community of everyone who IDs as ace or aro. this is not white cishets as a rule, as a majority, or even half the time.

that being said, inclusionists can say some stupid, shortsighted shit sometimes that is completely ignorant of LGBT history/oppression. i dont agree with the implications that i dont stand for every single thing they say and will not be held accountable for every single thing they say.

similarly, unless you wanna be held accountable for every single thing your side says/does before being allowed to call us out, uh, dont expect the same of us. the onus for this is on exclusionists, i have been around long enough to know you guys started this one. it is up to you guys to start being decent on that one, and then we’ll follow suit. those of us who dont are jackasses.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their abuse or rape took place. that is called gaslighting, and no, you don’t get to throw a fit when someone calls this what it is. when you call a rape/abuse survivor an annoying disgusting freak for daring to talk about why their rape/abuse happened (since they factually know why it happened and you dont) and then proceed to insist that your headcanon of their trauma is the correct interpretation and theirs is not because theyre a filthy cishet ace (which they rarely are), that is quite literally the definition of gaslighting. and hey, don’t do it.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their parents forced them into Therapy Specifically Designed To Convert Them Away From Asexuality (which may have a more efficient, shorter name). you dont know how that therapy worked or how the therapist worked because you werent there. you dont know that it was only because of homophobia so therefore this person has no right to claim their own trauma.

not everyone you hate is a cishet ace. don’t call people cishet aces unless you know for a fact they are cishet aces. i imagine you wouldnt want to call a trans lesbian a cishet, which exclusionists have done too many times for me to count. your platform should not be “you said something stupid and harmful, youre a cishet ace,” it should be “you said something stupid and harmful, end of statement.”

for some reason this is a controversial point in some discourse circles, but no one owes you sex. your partners don’t owe you sex. relationships do not equal sex. relationships do not even equal romantic love. relationships are a decision between multiple people on closer emotional intimacy.

if romantic and sexual aspects of a relationship are necessary for you, that’s understandable and okay! but you aren’t OWED that. people don’t need to out themselves as aro or ace for you. people dont need to feel pressured to give you anything they dont want to give. and you dont need to stay in relationships that dont make you happy.

allosexual privilege is not real. no one but white cishet men are 100% celebrated and privileged for experiencing sexual attraction. even white cishet women are oppressed for their attraction in many ways, and repressed from early childhood - so you can imagine how absolutely horrific sex-based oppression is for the LGBT community. we are not celebrated for sexual attraction, we are treated like we are dirty, and we are sexual predators.

WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, yeah, sometimes we are definitely, blatantly favored over aces, and people run around saying asexuality is unnatural, and sexual attraction is what makes us human. this is harmful and damaging, and it shouldn’t happen. i dont consider it systemic oppression and it definitely does not make allosexual privilege a thing.

calling people allosexuals is not something i condone. its not comparable to “cis” as a label, because cis people are an actual oppressor class towards trans people - non-ace LGBP folks are not towards ace people.

intracommunity bigotry is real and it is traumatic. people devalue it constantly and pretend it’s just a slap on the wrist, but it is an absolutely traumatic thing to have to face every day of your life. but it isnt the same as OPPRESSION, and we dont have to conflate the two concepts for intracommunity bigotry to be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

similarly, dont call people REGs unless they are not only aphobes but also truscum or TERFs. i also personally dont really believe in equating aphobes with truscum/TERFs but i dont believe in silencing trans people who openly talk about the similarities, either.

dont call people AERFs unless youre a trans woman holy shit

as someone who was directly affected by the truscum discourse when it happened [not debatable, by the way], this is pretty much recycled truscum discourse in my eyes. you dont need to lecture me on how its not.

just because someone on the “other side” called something you did ableist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc., does not mean you get to shut your eyes and plug your ears. ESPECIALLY if you are part of a privileged class relevant to that accusation. for example as a white exclusionist you dont get to ignore the concerns of inclusionists of color or lecture them on the racism of the ace community. for example as a cis inclusionist [or honestly, even just a non-trans-woman inclusionist] you dont get to ignore the concerns of trans exclusionist women or lecture them on the similarities between TERFs and exclusionists.

“aspec” is not exclusively for the autistic community and i have NEVER seen claims that it was until ace discourse started. thats transparent as fuck to me and youre not fooling anyone. dont just make shit up lmfao

jokes about how Oh Lol Cringe aces inherently are, arent funny especially considering how many of these Jokes are steeped in anti-autistic ableism

idk when this happened but recently ableist jokes are the new Hot Topic of Comedy and thats like, mind-numbingly bad

i dont care what side youre on, IF YOU ARE USING THINGS LIKE FICTIONAL CP/PEDOPHILIC SHIPS/INCEST/RAPE CONTENT TO COPE WITH YOUR TRAUMA, YOU BETTER BE DOING THAT SHIT IN PRIVATE, ONLY SHARING IT WITH LIKE-MINDED, ADULT SURVIVORS, AND NEVER LETTING THAT CONTENT CIRCULATE OUTSIDE OF THAT GROUP. end of story. no ifs, ands or buts about it. speaking as a survivor who uses stuff like this to cope, being a survivor does not give you a free pass to, inadvertently or not, contribute to the pedophilia and circulation of grooming material on the internet. it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a survivor to not continue that cycle. if you avoid that responsibility, you have no right to play victim or pull the “im a survivor ;-;” card when people call you out on this.

educating kids on asexuality is not pedophilia, grooming or sexual abuse. jesus christ lmfao you dont have to assume people word it in a way thats inappropriate or predatory just because theyre pro-ace. kids NEED label/identity options, they are discovering who they are and without a label that fits for them, theyll likely feel like shit. let them have their labels. knowing about asexuality might greatly improve their life if it fits them!

for this reason, stop being weird about mogai labels/trying to “ban” them from everyone’s vocabulary/trying to turn them into some Cringe Joke that is only about Cishets Trying To Be Special. they didn’t fuck over EVERYONE.

inclusionists, in advising kids and questioning people who ask you for answers, be more open-ended. the insistence of “oh youre not a lesbian you’re a quioromantic demi-homosexual!” without also making it ok to just be a lesbian is what hurt and confused so many people on their journey to discovering their identity and its why they resent the whole mogai thing, fairly so. make it okay to just be a lesbian, or just be gay, or just be bi, or just be trans, while letting people know their other, more specific options.

asexuality is not an NSFW or TMI orientation

ace headcanons arent INHERENTLY homophobic, racist or ableist. they absolutely can be and ive seen that shit with my Own Two Eyes [pure innocent baby ace autistic papyrus headcanons back in the undertale fandom (shudders)], but they are not INHERENTLY so.

headcanons for characters with marginalized identity labels that arent identical to the ones you headcanon that character with are not oppression. and you dont get to police this shit as if its factually wrong

absolutely zero sexual interactions with minors ever, thanks!

trying to Bother The Pure Aceys by talking about sex is unacceptable

posting bullshit in ace positivity tags is unacceptable

stop calling people doing nothing but talking about their experiences “freaks”???

dont engage in the whole Oh There Are Valid Identities And There Are Special Snowflake Identities thing its not a very good look

biphobia is its own thing independent of homophobia

biphobia perpetuated within the community isnt necessarily systemic oppression but its traumatic and wrong and shouldnt be treated like some Lol Cringe Joke

you cant just say UM THAT LITERALLY NEVER HAPPENS???? when someone calls your side out on shit lgfkhghgfh especially when it literally does, all the damn time

ace [IRL person, whether or a celebrity or god forbid a flat out bigot] moodboards arent funny

you shouldnt agree to sex that you as an ace person dont want in a situation that you can control if the sex happens or not, but the pressure to provide sex to a non-ace partner is very real. stop blaming ace ppl for that pressure lol speaking as a victim of coercive sexual abuse, you cannot blame the one who didnt want it, even if they COULD have spoken up.

you’re not a bad person for wanting sex if your ace partner doesn’t. there is nothing immoral about not being ace. you just dont get to have sex anyway and you arent owed it if you are set on this committed, monogamous relationship - if sex is a big deal to you, you need to leave that relationship or work out an open situation.

laughing off peoples’ experiences as The Discourse is completely unacceptable, it encourages people to shut up and never analyze themselves and their identities

its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the ace character is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their non-ace partner

similarly its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the non-ace partner is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their ace partner

you dont get to tell people “ok you identify as heteroflexible but ACTUALLY you’re [insert identity]” literally ever, i understand the concern with people using “safe” identity labels to avoid facing their LGBT identities but acting on that concern in that way is not concern, its concern-trolling and its not fuckin okay.

legitimizing your own identity by delegitimizing the identities of others is bad

DO NOT, AND I REPEAT, DO NOT, BLANKET-TERM PEOPLE AS QUEER, LITERALLY EVER. DONT DO IT

DONT FUCKIN DO IT!!!!! NOT EVERYONE HAS RECLAIMED THAT SLUR, AND IT IS 100% A SLUR ON TOP OF BEING A CULTURE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

JESUSS CHRIST DONT FUCKIGN DO IT!!!! WHEN YOU REFERENCE THE QUEER COMMUNITY YOU BETTER ONLY MEAN PPL WHO CALL THEMSELVES QUEER AND HAVE RECLAIMED IT/ARE PART OF THAT SUBCULTURE

we need more nonsexual, non-alcoholic spaces for LGBT folk that are safe for minors, trauma survivors and ace people, but thats not our fault, the prevalence of sexual and alcoholic spaces exists because we were literally not allowed to exist anywhere else until very, VERY recently, and even now it’s a Barely thing

you cant tell someone their experiences didnt happen like my god

we think ace discourse is about more than cishets because exclusionists make it about asexuality as a whole. you guys cant make it about more than cishets and then be like But Ok It’s Just About Cishets You IRrational Crazies?? :/

yes self harm through exposing oneself to the discourse tag is possible, no it’s not funny, no it’s not just ~cishets~doing that, triggers are not exclusive to PTSD survivors, shut the actual fuck up

you dont have any room to comment on the validity of quasiplatonic relationships if you’re not in one, most of the time you guys complaining about them and saying theyre Special Snowflake Things dont actually know what they are. mind your own business lol let people live

if youre not intersex, you dont get to tell people that the intersex community doesnt wanna consider itself LGBT, so they are wrong for saying intersex people are allowed to consider themselves LGBT. youre not being a good ally. sit down, shut up and let intersex people talk amongst themselves.

[to be added to at some point im sure]

asexuals STOLE dragons from CHILDREN to make themselves seem PURE AND INNOCENT, the MONSTERS