#who are both aro btw

[bonker-bananas]

i just want to hold your hand. and also maybe kiss you platonically on the mouth. idk i haven’t sorted out my feelings yet

[lesbianfakir]

Seeing posts about aroace mytho and I’d like to raise you my personal cherished headcanon that I hold near and dear to my heart: aromantic Duck.

So obviously people love shipping Duck so this headcanon won't catch on but hear me out. Duck's strongest relationships are (arguably) platonic ones.

Duck explicitly says she loves Mytho, yes, but as the show progresses that love becomes more evidently platonic. She admires Mytho but she doesn't want him, especially when compared with Rue. Her feelings for Mytho markedly change over the course of the first season. She stops blushing around him, stops imagining herself in a relationship with him. That initial attraction is replaced by a deep admiration and a desire to save him.

Her crush on Mytho could be read in a variety of ways--it could be physical attraction, comphet, or a simple desire to be close to him that has been misinterpreted as romantic feelings.

Beyond Mytho, she regards Rue as a beloved friend, and any indication that she may have feelings for Fakir may just easily be read as platonic. In fact, it's very telling that her closest relationship is with the person who becomes her best friend, rather than her star-crossed fairytale prince.

The part that hammers in the aromantic narrative for me is how, according to the story, Tutu's whole life is supposed to revolve around romantic love. She gives everything for her love until there is nothing left of her. Duck is simply fulfilling a role.

In the scene that struck me as the most aromantically coded Drosselmeyer tells Duck she "should" be in love with Mytho and want to marry him. She seems uncomfortable at this and looks away without responding. This leaves her feelings for Mytho up to interpretation, but personally I always read it as Duck is uncomfortable because she hasn't been thinking about marrying Mytho. She is unsure how to respond because she knows she is failing to perform her role as a Princess.

Drosselmeyer forces amatonormativity upon Duck and tries to reduce her whole role to her feelings for Mytho, expecting her to drop everything for him in a way that completely disregards her other important relationships. This is contrasted by how Duck's feelings for Mytho are so deeply tied to the fact that she became human for him. She is more upset at the prospect of returning to a duck and losing her friends and ability to dance than she is at losing Mytho's love.

I like taking the amatonormative narrative and twisting it to be an aromantic one. The story of Princess Tutu is about a girl who cannot confess her love in the "normal" way without completely losing herself. Duck works around this by finding unconventional ways to express love. She cannot confess a type of love she does not feel. And when Duck does find love it's an unconditional, no-pressure love that doesn't demand romance or reciprocation of her. She has stopped trying to perform relationships and is allowed to exist as herself. As a shoujo protagonist she is breaking the conventions of the genre by not "ending up" with anyone, but i find it a much more resonant ending than if she had ended up with her "Prince."

[nadia-cannot-think-straight]

Honestly jayvik gets 10 times more depressive to me when i read it as queerplatonic rather than straight up romantic.

[redysetdare]

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

[mildcicada]

Hehe

[izzibeeb]

last day of pride month. behold my OCs

[arolesbianism]

Just realized I forgot to post these

[moinsbienquekaworu]

The struggle between being happy that all kinds of aspecs are talking about aspec experiences more and barely being able to stand the way people talk about aspec experiences

[235uranium]

not to be back on my bullshit already but like. ford talking about how he doesn't understand romance in journal 3 quite literally does not prove he's ace in any sense of the definition unless you assume only ace people struggle with traditional relationship models (literally not fucking true??) or that aro people are always/usually ace (I am beating you with a broom). it's evidence towards him being aro if anything!

but even then I think that's an accidental meaning in the writing. the passage exists to show how detached ford is from the sheer idea of family and how he doesn't understand fiddleford's attachment to his wife and son! it's also a subtle reason to show why the pines family might not notice anything after the portal incident (i.e- ford didn't talk to his parents or sister much, if at all, after moving to gravity falls.)

it's even more frustrating when ppl mention that line... and then make him alloace?????

[cicadagaze]

well I still don't hate moth flight. I think the anger in her decision has all been redirected towards starclan now. because really it was THEIR decision. THEIR rule. because how dare anyone be devoted to anyone other than them?

[supplimental]

gritting my teeth fingers clawed into my thighs in a death grip reciting I wont listen to the Penumbra Podcast again to see if it gets better I wont listen to the Penumbra Podcast again to see if it gets better I w

[cinema-wasps]

I'm so glad that after that o.landy post I didn't have anyone coming into my inbox saying I was just jealous. because I think being jealous of randy fucking jade is like. the lowest low you can hit

[sminny-wew]

I had a long discussion with friends earlier about the gender bias in how YA books are marketed and it somehow evolved into me saying "We need more fiction that questions the concept of attraction itself"

We got into how easily romance can be latched onto other genres (romantic comedy, romantic drama, fantasy romance, historical romance, etc.) and I started asking myself what an arocom (aromantic comedy) would look like. I decided, based on an old Tumblr post I can't find that joked about some comedy movie being aro representation b/c it had no romance, that it can't just be "a comedy with no romance at all", because then that's just a regular old comedy. By that logic, SpongeBob would be an arocom, which doesn't make sense b/c it largely focuses on non-romantic plots (SpongeBob working at his job, failing to get his license, the general shenanigans he and his friends get into) and only addresses romance sparingly, depending on the plot of an episode.

It sucks to admit but at least from my perspective, in order for a piece of media to qualify as "aromantic/asexual media" in the heavily sex- and romance-catered media landscape, it kinda needs to address sex and romance in the first place. As wonderful as it would be to escape for a few hours to a book or show or game where romance isn't addressed at all and think of that as aro rep, you can't really call attention to a character's lack of romantic or sexual attraction without acknowledging, even indirectly, that those exact things exist within the text.

I'm not saying sex and romance are inherently bad either. There are aces who engage in sexual activities, aros who date, folks on both spectrums who engage in kink because kink is not inherently sexual and just approach relationships in so many incredibly nuanced ways. It's not just about aspecs also having parents and siblings and pets either, we have friends and coworkers and neighbors. We have interests and skills and hobbies. But it's not just the cishets who place sex and romance on such a high pedestal as "fundamental aspects of what makes people human", I see it within the LGBT community too. There are more than a few openly queer folks out there who don't know or have forgotten that because asexuality and aromanticism are a lack or absence of attraction (and thus a lack/absence of conformist heterosexuality), that we are, to varying degrees, queer as well. And thus media with aroace subtext (or just text for that matter) tends to get excluded from discussions of queer subtext.

I feel like I got a little off-topic and rambly but Idk I just think we need more aspec fiction where people are free to explore all spectrums of attraction as much as they want, ask questions about what defines a relationship, and just generally bear in mind relationship anarchy when they create. I'd like to see it in mainstream media but I'd also like to see it in fanfic too

(Btw everything I just said also extends to people who are poly)

[skrunksthatwunk]

ok elaborating more sorry. i wanna emphasize/reiterate that it feeds a fantasy of her naturally being what a woman should be (in several layers a woman, a straight woman, and a gender-conforming cishet woman), of having a more traditionally feminine nature, and of having more prominent female guidance in her life.

she never really had older female role models or guides, and her dad was barely able to be a father to her, much less help her figure that whole mess out. she's a tomboy, y'know? she's kinda rough around the edges where other girls seem to have it all figured out. again, i think she likes being this way (see the more masc way she dresses when given choice over it), but junketsu's fantasy is one of never having to struggle with the consequences of nonconformity, chosen or inherent. (and i mean i would argue one's tomboyness or butchness isn't that much of a choice, but that's a tangent im not getting into)

fantasy-ragyo is someone who can give ryuko that being-a-proper-woman guidance, and who can nurture her like her father didn't. maybe if she got that kind of softer-touch attention ppl associate with mothers, she wouldn't have ended up like this. she could be feminine and delicate like every other girl. she could be normal. junketsu's fantasy is for typical femininity to be something ryuko doesn't have to struggle through alone and something that comes naturally to her. to have always been rather than to become, as i said in the first part.

im adding this because i think i jumped to the it's about being a lesbian thing a little too quickly and skimmed over the bits about gender performance that i think are very very interwoven with that.

the wedding scene could be about being butch. this could be about being a lesbian in general. this could be about being genderqueer. it could be a lot, honestly.

but i think it's important to note how it focuses on normative girlhood as part of the fantasy

i also think it's noteworthy how this is inseparable with marriage as what a woman should do, and as what a girl should look forward to. women's roles in patriarchal systems, and fascist systems in particular, are inseparable from marriage, from chaste reproduction (to make more cattle for the life fibers in-universe, and irl often things like making more soldiers/white babies for racial conflicts that are always just around the corner (and which they always, always start, because fascism relies on destruction and violence against an enemy to survive)). that normal girlhood must culminate in marriage to a man. there is no other way to be a normal girl. and you have to be a normal girl.

like i said in the first part, this self-determination pertaining to what it means for ryuko to be a woman could have been portrayed with the Strong Independent Woman version i described, in which the definition of womanhood is merely separated from marriage and romance, but that's not all that happens.

once again, it's not just that ryuko doesn't need this, it's that it cannot coexist with her.

she cannot still be ryuko and be this normal girlbride. the two are antithetical to each other because of something fundamental to her, something junketsu is helping her pretend doesn't exist. whatever that may be, the very essence of ryuko, or some key part of it, must be purged for this kind of life to be possible. and at that point, she's not ryuko anymore.

again, i think it's lesbianism, but it could be something else, something more vague and nebulous about identity, or something like genderqueerness (in particular think there's a pretty good trans man/transmasc reading in there somewhere) or aromanticism (i think each of these would be very powerful). the wedding scene is a lot of things, and can be about many more.

at the end of the day, it's mostly about being yourself and not what your mom wants you to be!! and devaluing the societal structures/roles/conventions around us bc they suck real bad!!! hell yeah 🤘🤘

man i think part of what fucks me up (/pos) about the wedding scene (klk) is how well it conveys that the fantasy junketsu puts on ryuko is not a romantic one.

like i think it would've been really easy to make it about her wanting to find a man who could take care of things for her or love her unconditionally and when mako busts her out the message is You Don't Need A Man! You're A Strong Independent Woman!! or something (which is a perfectly fine message btw. i bring it up because i suspect that's how some people read it, especially those who see ryuko as straight, in an utena-hetero-girlboss way (yes i HAVE encountered that reading before. head in my hands)). maybe there's a montage of the groom and her at romantic milestones (confession, proposal, dates, moving in, whatever), and mako busts in while they're exchanging rings or leaning in for a kiss or something. they could have done that.

but the show puts SO little focus on the groom, to the point of emphasizing his facelessness and lack of relevance to the fantasy and its appeal (see the door handle knocking him over and ryuko not noticing, too busy looking at mako), that i think it's impossible to read it that way. and that's great bc what's actually there is so much more interesting and thematically relevant.

ryuko wants a normal childhood with a mom who loves her and spends time with her doing typical family stuff, who sticks with her as she grows up. the fantasy is of a normal development and family structure, of assimilation into a typical path of life for a woman, with its typical milestones. that includes getting married to a man. the fantasy is being naturally what society wants her to be, what will allow her to connect most easily to others within it. she's always butted heads with others, never fitting in for reasons she can't really understand, or often because she thinks the rules themselves are stupid. that came with isolation. loneliness.

the fantasy of junketsu's wedding is of conformity. it is also of conformity without effort, without awareness.

she doesn't want to force herself to fit in, because she knows that feels like shit. she wants it to be seamless. second nature. that's what junketsu appeals to. not the fantasy of pretending to be straight or becoming straight, but simply being straight.

(if it isn't clear by now, i view ryuko as a lesbian. this scene is a big part of why.)

it's ryuko pretending to be (and to always have been) something that will never cause her trouble, that will never alienate her. (or junketsu making her pretend that, though i think it caters to a lingering insecurity of ryuko's, that lack of stability, connection, and conformity in her real life).

it's also part of why mako and senketsu's rescue is not about mako being the right one for ryuko, but about ryuko's identity. her core state of being. who she is as a person.

(personally i read ryuko and mako as romantic (and i believe the show does as well, hence, y'know, the date and the mako hallelujah imagery during her asking her out and mako hitting on her and and and. sorry but however you feel about them as a ship they are definitively canon), and the scene does have romantic appeal/a romantic angle to it. but i think that romance comes from mako understanding ryuko deeply, and from calling her back into the person she is, rather than the person she could have been were she to have lived a Completely Different Life, and showing her that she has community and companionship even without this. she can be part of a group without doing all this shit. she doesn't have to fight alone, and this wedding business isn't the only way out of that loneliness. it's a gesture of love and concern for her as a person, one that comes from senketsu and mako together, the people who love her the most.)

ragyo wants conformity. she is a fascist. she wants everybody to wear the same clothes, to be in their proper place in society, and to submit to those who have rightful power over them. A hierarchy with life fibers at the top and humans at the bottom. ragyo designs and distributes the roles (clothes) people ought to wear, talks about clothes that don't suit people, etc. she wants ryuko to conform like she is, and like she has. a feelingless marriage to some man for what she can get from him. fitting in. she wants to have daughters that fit in. she wants to fit in. she wants to fit in because she's fetishized her place above other humans (pigs in human clothing, in roles unbefitting their pig status), her place under life fibers.

it has nothing to do with love, so ragyo doesn't even bother with it. nor does junketsu. even though the guise of love could be a powerful aide here, the staff chose to leave the message unmuddied. it is about conformity.

for ryuko to fulfill this fantasy, she would have had to be a completely different person, with a completely different life.

ryuko could not be ryuko and still wear that wedding dress. so she tore it off to be herself again (something she'd been lamenting/resisting since finding out she was "a goddamned life fiber monster" shortly before getting put in junketsu).

also note that satsuki used this wedding dress for her own aims as well, though she is lucid through it. it pains her. it's a role she takes on to fight against ragyo (fire with fire). but she says she realizes she couldn't win using others like pawns. she couldn't win from inside the hierarchy, the establishment. she couldn't win using a groom and a dress for her own inauthentic reasons, nor using that clout to climb the ranks of something that was wholly rotten just to get closer to ragyo. the whole tree must be felled.

anyway

[mer-acle]

Do you have any athena hcs?

Uhhh

How much time do you have lol

I'll try to list the short ones so this post doesn't get too long. Due to writing about her a lot I have a lot of lore lmao

1. Athena is the eldest child (Hephaestus born shortly after her). Nobody who's spoken to her once would expect anything else honestly

2. At the time of the Odyssey she's about 4000 years old (No reason or proof I just decided) Her first 200 years give or take were spent with Triton (read: Pallas)

3. She only got assigned with Warfare as her domain after officially joining Olympus

4. Her emotional distance with her siblings is partly due to Pallas trauma, and partly due to Zeus liking to "keep her to himself" (read: isolated as the favorite). She gets along best with Hermes and Hephaestus (yes, I refuse to accept Erechtonius happened) bc the former is just as chaotic as herself and the latter shares her creativity and both don't ask for a big commitment from her (again. No Erechtonius and no arranged marriages in my plotline let me have this)

5. Dislikes being touched. Her siblings learn to accept it, Zeus does not. She doesn't try to enforce it with him. (Yes in every iteration of her that I will ever write, there will be a touch-starved to hug plotline sue me. I need therapy)

6. Never braids her hair. She used to have braids when with Pallas, but since then she has never worn her hair this way again. She also wears it quite a bit shorter than she used to back then.

7. Her grey eyes are inherited from Métis. They also glow in the dark. She has perfect night vision.

8. Perfect memory. Also she has bird's eye view versions of even her own memories (hc that one of her domains is history so that's why) It's how she found out that Zeus interfered with Pallas's death.

9. Used to have an Oceanic themed armor before joining Olympus (Métis made it for her) She allows Hephaestus to make her a new one, shedding the Ocean symbols in an effort to please Zeus.

10. Connected to her status as a virgin goddess but in contrast to Artemis, Athena dresses pretty covered up, doesn't undress even for bathing (in ancient Greece sometimes you'd keep your chiton on as a sort of bathing suit almost, but being naked was more common) (also this is not 'purity' stuff btw I just get that vibe from her, Artemis, literally go off queen you're doing great)

11. Classic but good, cocks her head like an owl like all the time. Also says "hmm" a lot (intonation may vary)

12. (Remember, my hc, you can do whatever you like) I think all the virgin goddesses are acespec/arospec in some capacity, but Athena is the cut and dry aro/ace/repulsed one. Like... It's a big fat no from her (I'm projecting hard btw)

Anyway twelve seems like a good number I hope you like them :) I picked those that aren't specific to Epic and can be applied to myth!Athena too

[sayyourprayers]

Mike not apologising is NOT Will's fault. No matter how many mental gymnastics moves you perform. Neither is Will calling El a stupid girl WRONG, when followed by an overgrown deathcap mushroom screaming homophobic rhetoric in Will's face. Stupid girl is as offhanded a comment as "girls have cooties". It was said to MIKE about him being with a girl (any really) over his friends (his best friend) (after all the shit that happened in S2 and apparently has been happening all summer) (enough for others - Lucas - also coupled - noticing and making a remark) Use BODMAS to solve.

Will does have flaws. Not kissing Mileven's ass isn't one of them. He is NOT a people pleaser. (Like at all, where in the show do we see that?) The word you're looking for is selfless. I think you even looked at it. Two VERY different things. And not causing more harm than good. Is El putting herself in danger causing more harm than good? Or is it necessary? And then others come up to say hey - you really don't have to go that far. There's a few steps between not doing anything and killing yourself. (Referring to closegate)

Let's also not forget his kidnapper/assailant is STILL inside him in a way. He feels him and doesn't just see him when he decides to look. There's no on/off switch. At least it's not in his control.

A mop misreading the status of his friendship with him isn't him setting up the relationship dynamics as such. Sounds like victim blaming. Looks like victim blaming. Would probably answer to being called victim blaming. A paisa for my thought : who builds the dynamic of a relationship? The one wielding some extra power (no matter the fact that the person isn't evil) or the one that's the pushover? Does Will get mistreated cuz he allows himself to be mistreated or because people mistreat him? Seeing as him standing up for himself is seeing as blowing up - and him expressing himself without blowing up is dismissed callously (d&d).

A perpetrator does not need time to heal btw. If I slap someone, I don't need time or opportunity to heal myself before apologising to the person I slapped. S/he's the one hurt. I'm the one that hurt them. Lucas understands this. He even apologises successfully and Will accepts it while not making a show of it. (All the scenes that follow - including firecracker stuff) Mike on the other hand never apologises and the peace they have is tentative in the aftermath of all that transpired at hawkins mall. It's not resolved just pushed back (as seen with Mike's reaction to Will giving away his D&D stuff and Will having to clarify that he will ofc play with the party - something that would never have been doubted has season 3 events not transpired cuz of Mike and then Lucas)

Freeze response is a flaw when he can't save someone ELse from getting bullied? (Victim blaming's identical twin called some more victim blaming) If the result of the response makes it a flaw or not, so far it's been a mixed bag on the show with all kinds of responses then. Freeze/Flight/Fight responses are not flaws. They're close to involuntary responses and calling them a flaw would imply premeditation on Will's part. That's just completely WRONG. No need to elaborate anything there at all.

Character traits aren't just a SWOT analysis. They are what they are and a character functions according to those. This pretty much gives final boss gunslinger Will is where his flaws will be addressed. His canonical bravery against his supernatural assailant means nothing if he isn't pummeling people to the ground, being a noisy whiny asshole or helping his sister-friend not get bullied?

What is the need and basis for this flawnalysis (analysis of flaws or flawed analysis, both work) when it's isolated from what came before and after the coconut tree of life? His freeze response is exactly that - a RESPONSE cultivated as a result of continued experience of bullying and abuse from a very young age. Whether it be on his person or something he witnessed closely around him. How is it a flaw if that is what saves him and keeps the situation from escalating? So far he's the one that's not punched someone and gotten arrested or near arrested for it, disintegrated, caused the death of unwitting people (he is one of them actually). Should that happen for him to erase that flaw?

Will internalising his feelings and then blowing up when things get right upto here is absolutely what can be considered a flaw/ negative character trait. It causes him pain and also creates discord even if temporary. It is NOT a flaw when he's keeping SOME things close to his heart though. Again, all of his responses aren't because of his flaws but some are because of things that happened previously on Stranger Things.

I absolutely look at this resurgence in finding Will's flaws an exercise taken up to find evidence for what's been ordained as truth instead of finding the said flaws in search of textual truth. A way to prop other characters or devalue Will's idk. Overlooking the tone of the show and how heavy handed the characters' designated roles in the story are to instead bestow a seriousness and prestige to the show that it does not at all, at any point in time, seek or strive for, renders the entire analysis (omg it's coming) FLAWED.