#this is more about dysphoria than aromanticism btw like

[neotomiccccc]

My experience and mine alone.

[kincringeemporium]

So I promised y’all a high school kinnie storytime. Suffer/enjoy.

First off, for some context, I was generally a dick in high school. Nobody has to be a social butterfly, and if you’re more focused on your education than having lots of friends at that age, hey, good on you. I’m not dragging that. I’m saying that I was -- again -- a pretentious little piece of shit. 

Now, being a pretentious little piece of shit, I sought people who didn’t follow the usual crowds and didn’t agree with the most common points of view in my school. These people were, in my mind, smarter. Better. More worth my time.  

However, being rather bored and lonely and wanting at least one friend, I kind of shrugged off some red flags that showed up among the people who did meet my stupid fucking high standards. I didn’t ignore these red flags, but shrugged and went, “Well, if I don’t hang out with them, I won’t be hanging out with anyone.” 

So, here are the key players in this magical tale of bullshit. 

If, by some fucking miracle, either of them manage to find this (because they are most definitely on tumblr), I don’t want some shitsplosion out of my laptop screen -- so, fake names.  

Marc, who claimed to be an aroace trans boy. (I say “claimed” because... you’ll see.) 

Z, who was apparently nonbinary, also I can’t remember anything about their name other than that it had a Z in it. 

Alright... So I decided to start a writing club. Marc, Z, and some others showed up because I’d been polite to them in classes and such. We also shared some interests. Mainly Steven Universe and Tumblr. (The others aren’t really important, so I won’t mention them beyond that.) 

In the first meeting, we shared our names, pronouns, hobbies, and years of writing experience. Marc and Z didn’t come up with any hobbies aside from “Internet”, “anime”, and the dreaded “social activism”. At this point, the logical bit of my brain was like, yikes. 

But it gets way, way worse. We also shared our Tumblr urls (my high school Tumblr is still out there, btw). I will now list some of the shit that I encountered on their blogs. 

“Soft confused transboy, they/them or he/him” on Marc’s about 

Undertale Sans in front of green/yellow/black flag as Marc’s icon 

Some edgy, fake-deep line in Z’s about (I don’t remember what) 

“They/them, xe/xem” in Z’s about 

A whole fuck ton of SU Peridot posts from Z 

Posts on both blogs @’ing each other, tagged with “qpp”, “pda”, and related shit

“lol Big Gay!” and “ewww straights!” jokes all over both blogs 

Yeah. Yikes. But still, I was pretty desperate for something to do. 

So I kept talking to them. I thought Marc was alright, so tried to find out more about him. Eventually we got round to talking about crushes, orientations, etc. I asked Marc what qpp meant. 

He gave me some long winded explanation that didn’t actually explain much. What I understood from it was that a qpp is a friend who you love, but aren’t in love with. (Which is... just a best friend.) 

Z gave a similar explanation. And I thought... alright. I guess that’s that. Weird, but eh. 

Until one day, a ‘tag something about your crush/s.o.’ post appeared on my dash from Marc tagged “I kissed my qpp today!! I’m so happy!!!” And I was... confused. Didn’t Marc, as an aromantic person, not fall in love? Didn’t kissing someone and getting those warm fuzzy feelings mean you were in love with them?  

I decided to do some digging. An initial scroll through Z’s blog revealed surprisingly little of interest... but then I found, buried somewhere in their links, a “me” button. So I clicked it. Selfies. I was about to click off before I reached the very bottom and, being in public, had to do a double take to ensure no one was behind me. A bikini selfie, yay! And Z was 16. Butt out, tits out, all of it. Tagged with, you guessed it, “body positivity”.  

Now... I’m not insulting overweight people (Z was a little overweight) for liking themselves, feeling confident, etc. I’m not even insulting them in particular wearing bikinis, even if I don’t like bikinis in general. I’m saying that at 16, Z should not have been posting sexy selfies under the guise of a movement that claims to be built on self acceptance and confidence. 

So, I pulled away from Z some. 

That left me more time to talk with Marc. I didn’t say a word about his relationship (bc that’s what it was) with Z. Looking back, I find it odd that throughout our entire friendship, Marc didn’t mention dysphoria. Of course nobody has to tell all their friends all about their dysphoria. There was just no “Ugh, I got misgendered earlier” or anything about “pre-transition, I...”  But anyway. 

I started looking through Marc’s blog again. There were a hell of a lot of Sans posts and it didn’t click with me back then that Marc may have been a fictionkin. I don’t recall if he tagged the Sans posts with anything kinnie-ish, but holy fuck, there were a lot. It was weird. 

Also weird was that as the year went on, Marc stopped showing up to writing club as often. I asked him what was up, and said that if he didn’t want to be in the club anymore, he should just let me know - because that’d be okay. But no, he made some excuse and walked away from the conversation. 

The next day, I got a text from Marc saying (not verbatim, but still): “Hey, my anxiety has been really bad lately, and my doctors are saying not to participate in social clubs like this. I’m too tired. Really sorry!” 

 I said it was fine and didn’t think much of it. He and Z still spent a lot of time together in the halls and such; I didn’t put a ton of thought into that, either. 

Sometime the next week, a writer friend of mine (who was also in the club, and not annoying or shitty or anything), invited me to a GSA meeting. I was bored and decided to try it out. 

When I walked in, guess who the fuck I saw? 

Marc and Z.  

He could not even meet my eyes. I’ve never seen a person look that fucking guilty. My writer friend could tell something was up, smartly wanted no part of it, and excused herself. 

Marc had been attending GSA meetings the entire damn time, while claiming that he was following doctor’s orders by leaving writing club. 

Fucker. 

That’s the last I saw of Marc and Z.  

And all the things that add up to suspiciously kinnie-like behavior... 

Z’s neopronouns 

Marc’s weird mogai-ish version of aromanticism 

Marc’s Sans icon and Sans posts

Z’s fuck ton of Peridot posts 

Both Z and Marc encouraging each other’s behavior 

Marc’s lying and fake anxiety claims 

“soft transboi” 

So... that’s that. 

I’ve got more cringe-inducing stories, too. I can tell y’all about: 

A girl in bio class who was a complete ballsack

she was obnoxiously, overly sweet 

she used her mental disabilities as an excuse to act ignorant 

she thought being gay was a choice 

she clearly had no respect for transgender people (with legitimate gender dysphoria) 

was a complete pain in the ass to my favorite teacher 

I did something passive aggressive to her because I was done with her shit 

Two girls in anime club who were also huge ballsacks 

appeared to hate each other 

one was very small, quiet, and a loner 

other was loud, edgy, and unironically said “we’re here and we’re queer!” 

quiet one 100% lead me on  

loud one was a fucking dick to me

there’s a plot twist 

bonus: loud dickish one tried to be my friend and I was not falling for it

-K