Hello, don't mind me, I just need to vent for a second.
First off, I just wanna say, as an aroace person on the ace-spectrum, feel free to ship Alastor all you want. Ship him with anyone. Have fun with it. Sex repulsed. Non-sex repulsed. Grey-ace. Demisexual. Pure unadulterated smut. Whatever, have at it. I love that shit.
Just please do it without infantilizing ace-aro people.
The amount of art, fics, and takes I've come across that's so patronizing to Alastor and his sexuality. Thing's like Alastor venting to Rosie about his feelings for a character with the caption "Alastor feeling love for the first time." Or Alastor wanting to have sex with a character and having feelings about that, and someone commenting "That's called a boner, sweetheart. That means you like them 🤭"
Like??? Like do ya'll not see how patronizing that sounds? Being ace-aro doesn't mean you don't know your own body. It doesn't mean you don't understand the functions of your body.
It doesn't mean you've never experienced intense emotions. It doesn't mean you've never experienced love before.
And, look, I know these are meant to be jokes. I know. People are joking. I laughed at the first few I came across, too. It's not meant to be harmful or condescending; no one means it that way. But there's been so much with such...bad takes recently, and I don't know about any other ace-spec people (I don't speak for all ace-specs. Hell, there are probably other ace-spec's who don't mind, enjoy it, or are making content like it themselves. I just speak for myself) but GOD it's getting uncomfortable.
Alastor is in his late 30's-early 40's in human years. That is the established age range we have for him. Do you really think that he'd go that long without ever experiencing "love?" He went through puberty just like everyone else, do you think he doesn't understand his own body???
Being asexual, or sex-repulsed, or touch-repulsed doesn't mean you automatically don't explore these parts of yourself. It doesn't mean he's never, once in his life, touched his own dick, or pussy, or whatever genitalia you're giving him. He can still very well be a "virgin" (which in and of itself is a social construct) while also knowing his body and confidently handling any "sexual needs" he has.
Do you really think he doesn't know what a boner is? That in all the years he's been alive and dead (on Earth and in Hell), he wouldn't have experienced these things once? (And you know what? Maybe he hasn't! Perhaps there are ace's out there like that! But you're telling me he doesn't KNOW what that is??? Really???)
Ah, no, it's all because he just hasn't found the right person yet, right? It's not until Lucifer/Angel Dust/Vox, whoever found him, and they gave him these feelings, and oh no, poor Bambi is feeling twitterpated and horny for the first time, isn't that romantic!
Honestly, not really. It just sounds like the same, stupid shit ace-aro people hear from family, friends, and acquaintances about their sexuality. You know, the tried and true: "Oh, you just haven't found the right person yet. You'll want all that eventually, you'll see😊"
Do you not see how frustrating that is?
Look, I am all down for Alastor exploring parts of himself. I want him to navigate different relationships, feel them out, figure out what kind of relationship he wants and what he's okay and not okay with doing. But there are ways to do that without treating him like a little UwU silly baby boy who doesn't know his own body, or his own emotions, or his own relationships with other characters. Like he needs someone to teach him about himself.
How about instead, he finds someone he feels comfortable exploring these elements with? Instead of them "teaching" him how to fuck, or masturbate, or whatever the hell you want to call it, they're giving him the room and safe-space to explore it at his own pace??!!
It comes across as someone who isn't on the ace-spectrum "teaching" an ace-spec character about their own sexuality which puts such a gross taste in my mouth. Or, at least, that's how it comes across to me.
And the thing is, I know people aren't going to stop. I know they're going to keep infantilizing Alastor and his aro-ace identity, and I wasn't originally going to make this post, because you can't control what people do in fandom.
So this is mostly just a post to say: HEY! Hello! Ace-aro person here! I hope you all are having fun and I love that you're exploring Alastor's asexual/aromantic identity! Especially those who may not be in the ace-spectrum themselves, as you're learning about us and our experiences! That's awesome! Can we just do that while also treating Alastor like the adult he is? Can we do that without being infantilizing and patronizing about his sexual identity? Please?"
That's all I really wanted to say. I just needed to get this off my chest instead of letting it fester. This isn't an attack on anyone, this is just the perspective of an Alastor multi-shipper who loves exploring his relationships with other characters (sexually and non-sexually) and deep-diving into the dynamics of the show.
Thanks for reading.
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ahem. Aspecs are FUCKING VALID. and they're RIGHT, goddammit.
About what specifically are they right, you may ask?
Listen. Asexuals will side-eye you whenever you describe sexual attraction, and I presume the same happens for aromantics and romantic attraction.
While I can't personally speak on romantic attraction as I've never been fully aromantic, I can definitely say this with confidence.
Sexual attraction is fucking WEIRD, y'all.
You look at someone, or spend time with them, and suddenly you want to bed them? Look, it's a "normal" experience and it's definitely valid but I refuse to pretend that's not fucking bonkers yonkers.
Do any of y'all know what it's like to spend nearly two decades completely unbothered by all the bullshit that comes with having crushes, and then suddenly your entire world comes crashing down and OH GOD OH FUCK EVERYBODY IS HOT SO THIS IS WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT.
Do you?????
Demisexuals and other forms of gray-asexuals may know a similar experience, and it... like. How do I even describe it.
Going from 0% sexual attraction to 100% sexual attraction TO EVERY GENDER over the course of A FEW DAYS was... an experience, to say the least.
Anyways. Respect aspecs (and that includes the asexual spectrum, the aromantic spectrum, the aplatonic spectrum, and loveless folks) or die by my fucking sword.
I don't actually have a sword. Can someone get me a sword?
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while it is incredibly sad to be leaving this paradise I’ve lived in and made home for the last three years, and I’m terrified to enter this period of uncertainty where my life will be made vastly more difficult in virtually every way possible —— I know that I’m resilient and capable, I know that the rough part will be temporary, and I know it’s what I have to do to secure the more stable future I want in the long run. And that will be worth it in the end. And if it isn’t? Fuck it, me and Jenny will work out a way to get back here together instead, even if it is unstable and imperfect. this week has been really hard but also blank. I haven’t had time since returning from America to really settle back into here or relax or enjoy the beach or nature, to say goodbye to my life, it’s all been diving into logistics and packing and cleaning. And that can be a nice distraction from the fact that I’m making a huge life change, like listening to dnd podcasts with Jenny while I scrub years of dust from parts of my room I could never be bothered to reach has been so helpful and nice. But I’m like waiting for something to hit me that hasn’t yet. I’ve been feeling numb ripping up kilograms of old visa documents that I paid hundreds of euros for, spent hours working for, had anxiety attacks over, stood my ground while getting yelled at about them in the immigration office over. I said to myself I’d get a tattoo of the volcano before leaving the island, to hold onto it, to let it run in my veins. But I didn’t do that. Ran out of time. I know I’ll be back. I know that it takes hard work to get what I want. That’s why I had what I wanted for so long, I did it. But I’ve grown and I’ve fallen in love and what I need has changed, has been changing. I want desperately to share my life with my wife and that means working even harder. It is a sacrifice but that’s exciting and rewarding and romantic (yeah I’m romanticizing sacrifice, sue me, I am a pricefield bitch after all). Anyways, I’m not sure where I was going with this. I was just walking back from the cheapest grocery store prices I will ever see again in my life, wearing short shorts at night because it’s always comfortably warm and I never feel unsafe here, smelling the flowers on the tree lined street I only paid 300€ in rent to live on, when I started having to dodge cockroaches and had the thought “thank fucking GOD I’m leaving”. And felt good about that. little things
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hmm thinking about the idea of love songs. i think the idea of what a love song is that we have in our culture is inherently a little bit flawed because we have the idea that any song written about romantic feelings is a love song and im thinking thats not exactly true because there is a difference between "romance" and "love". what i'm saying is not that love is a broader category and applies to things that are not romantic in nature. this is in fact true, but it's not what makes the important distinction here. the true distinction between "romance" and "love" is that romance is a societally defined type of interest in another person, whereas love is, essentially, a promise that you make when you build a relationship.
as such, what i call "love" here might be better defined as "care", as that implies more time and effort, but that's a different suitcase to unpack and largely unimportant to my point here, which is more about the societal conventions of what we call love songs. the point is, relationships can be built with other people, yes, but also animals, places, organizations, ideas, so on and so on, whereas romance requires another person, hence the difference between the ideas of "romance" and "love".
with that in mind, there are two types of songs we in western, english speaking, society call "love songs":
1) songs that are about a person's romantic interest in someone that is either definitively known to be unrequited (existing monogamous relationship, sexuality that doesn't align, etc) or simply not requited (aka romantic interest being unknown); and
2) songs about an existing relationship (keeping in mind my points about relationships not just being with people, but also places, things, etcetera) as is.
(some examples of the latter category: mountaintop by relient k, which defines the relationship in question as non-romantic; or i miss my mum by cavetown, which is - as the title implies - a song about the singer missing their mother.)
now, the thing that makes distinguishing these two difficult is the fact that songs about an existing relationship CAN be about wanting certain aspects of that relationship to change. in these cases, determining that a song is one or the other will hinge either on a) authorial intent or b) whether the song is more about what the singer wants (thereby implying #1) or the lack thereof in that relationship (which would imply #2).
to get back to the subject at hand: the term "love song", as we think of it, is an umbrella term that include both of these two categories, and i think that perhaps it is reductive to do so. with that in mind, i think perhaps it would be more appropriate for "love song" to mean only the latter, whereas the former is a category of its own. WHICH is not to say that the two can't overlap — just that if a song is about a person with whom the singer has no relationship, it cannot be considered a love song due to the fact that it is a song about infatuation, not love.
(another interesting wrinkle this provides is the fact that a song might start out in the first category and, as the writer develops a relationship with a person, might move into the second category as they write more.)
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i think the whole discourse around whether or not cishet aro men are queer stems specifically from the idea of allo aros being hypersexual - and so the idea of an allo aro, specifically a straight aro man, draws to mind the idea of like, fuckboys, or sexist men who only view women as sex objects, etc. And that is likely why the idea of cishet aro men leaves such a bad taste in apparently so many peoples mouths
now, i’ve spoken before about how attraction =/= libido. i’ve mostly spoken about this in the context of being ace, where asexuals can still have a libido despite not experiencing sexual attraction. the confusion and conflation between attraction and behavior has been a huge source of frustration for me with regards to the popular idea of asexuality and how it has confused me on my path to figuring out my own sexual identity over the years
BUT. the idea holds true not only for aces who have high libidos - but also for allosexuals who have low libidos. the idea that to be allo aro is to immediately be some hypersexual fuckboy is just, so warped? just because you experience sexual attraction but not romantic attraction does not mean you immediately become some sexist pig who always needs your dick wet. like idk it’s just beyond fucking frustrating to see the way that people sexualize alloaros when they’re just - they’re just people. you would not assume what another person’s sex life or libido is if they were otherwise alloromantic allosexual, because your orientation describes the way you experience attraction, not your behavior and sex life, nor your libido. in the same way, being alloaro has literally nothing to do with what your actual libido is. so why are allo aros the exception? to try to divide the community and exclude them based on your assumption of their sex lives is just so fucked
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