#you're going down allo people

[codthefishgod]

HOLY SHIT GUYS IT'S INTERNATIONAL ASEXUALITY DAY! BREAK OUT YOUR BREADSTICK SWORDS AND YOUR MARINARA BOMBS, IT'S OFFICIALLY TIME TO WAGE OUR WAR AGAINST THE APHOBES

[mickeesthoughts]

Actually I hate having public socials cause everytime I try to have a nuanced take or discussion about aspects of my own identity, and how we don't fit into the same box, someone else will jump in, completely miss the point and ugh

God forbid you're not non binary or aroace in a lvl 1 lgbt way

[vroomvroomwee]

You ever just sit with a bunch of allo people and they start to describe their bfs/gfs and you're sitting there like "holy mother of jesus you people are fascinating. tell me more I need to write this down in my mental journal about how allo brains work. hold up let me get my microscope real quick for research purposes. okay continue, you were saying how your boyfriend never supports you, spews misogynistic shit and ignores your wishes despite you telling him repeatedly to cut off a particular behaviour but you still love him and want him around. mhm *scribble scribble* fascinating, go on"

[nekropsii]

Wild how when I call Shipping Culture oppressively pervasive and awful for any Aro/Ace with the gall to enjoy anything on the Internet, I get called a Fun-Hating Killjoy and told to just shut the fuck up or off myself, no matter how mild or polite my comment is. Wild how when I say a character either is textually Aro/Ace or is easier to read as Aro/Ace than Alloromantic/sexual, people start talking down to me like I'm a child who doesn't know anything, saying "Friendly reminder that Aro(s)/Aces can Date/Have Sex too, just like us Normal People!". As if I don't know anything about my own identity. Wild how when I do either of these things or even just say I'm not into a pairing or uninvested in shipping in general people call me fucking homophobic, even if the (at least popularly perceived - let's be honest, people are wrong half the time) genders of the characters is never once made relevant. Even though their reasoning for me being homophobic is lack of investment in a gay pairing they like, and nothing more. Wild how people throw little baby tantrums at even the gentlest criticism of Shipping Culture, or someone choosing not to engage heavily in it. Wild how they have the audacity to ask, with hostility, what the fuck Aro(s)/Aces are talking about when they say Shipping Culture is hostile to Aro/Ace fans, or ask what's wrong with them when they say that they aren't into Shipping.

It's almost like Bigots don't realize they're being Bigots when they do Bigotry, so just saying you're not a Bigot isn't enough. It's almost like Aro/Ace people know what the hell they're talking about. It's almost like we have a fucking point. It's almost like we're valid in expressing contempt and frustration with the constant expectation to engage with Romance and Sexuality at every waking moment, even if we're Romance and/or Sex Favorable. It's almost like we're tired of getting our identities erased, and we're tired of expecting to "act normal", and we're tired of just taking it when Allos use the Favorable members of our communities as a scapegoat for why they should be allowed to totally erase any of our representation just for their "Harmless Queer Fun" - deliberately, and I mean DELIBERATELY, failing to recognize or acknowledge the character's orientation, and how an A-Spec's personal relationship with and expressions of Love are going to look drastically different from an Allo person's - and call us the Bigots when we even glance in the direction of objection.

It's almost like Allo/Amatonormativity are oppressive forces.

Alloromantics/sexuals are constantly looking for any reason they can to call Aro(s)/Aces unloving, unfeeling, frigid, soulless, cruel. Inhuman. They're looking for any reason they can to call us whiny children, stupid, people who "just haven't found the right one", addressing us only as "Works in Progress", or someone who can have their sexuality corrected with the right stimulus - Conversion Therapy and Corrective Rape are okay when it happens to us, after all. Any reason at all to call us heartless monsters. AlloAces are confused children. They can be fixed. AroAllos are manipulative, unfeeling sexual predators. They can't be fixed - just kill them. AroAces are frigid, mean bitches. They can be fixed. God forbid you're Aplatonic. God forbid you're part of the Repulsed spectrum. God forbid you're one of the Loveless. God forbid you hold any pride in your identity, God forbid you don't keep your mouth shut, God forbid you critique the overinflated importance Allos place onto Love as a concept. God forbid you critique something as asinine and juvenile as fucking Shipping Culture. Do any one of these and you've put a bright red, blazing neon target on your back.

Wild how the only real humans amongst us are the Romance, Sex, and Friendship Favorable who put their head down and mask as Allo, and side with the Allos when their fellow A-Specs get too loud for the comfort of their Allo friend's delicate little fee-fees. After all, Vitriol and Harassment are warranted when an Allo's feelings get slightly hurt that an Aro person says, on their own account, to no one in particular, that they're sick of every tag being 80% Shipping Content. Which is a vehemently evil personal attack, clearly.

Wild.

[sortingmyideas]

This a bit of a confession.

I sure hope the internet doesn't hate this one "anon", because if I actually see people hating on this, I don't know what I'd do.

I'm a bold black stripe aroace.

However, slowly but surely, with the whole 'aros can still date' and 'aces can still have sex' thing, I started to be reminded of how I felt in the past, and what I tried to do to make others happy. I don't feel like going into details.

The pain of being ignored and being placed second in priority to those who could still date/have sex was too much for me. It got to the point of starting to become an ace exclusionist.

I'm still trying to recover from that mindset.

So to everyone, I beg of you, please listen to averse aro/aces.

I actually know exactly what you're talking about.

That mindset is dangerously easy to fall into and can sometimes be pretty hard to climb out of. As far as I'm concerned, if you're trying to be better, there's no reason to insult or disregard you. This ask really got me thinking, and I'm going to ramble a bit.

The problem is that to a lot of people (mostly allos), the idea of somebody not wanting to date/fuck is strange, and a lot of people don't like strange. So when they hear "some aces can fuck and some aros can date", they hear "aces and aros date and fuck so we can ignore the ones that don't because they're a little too weird" because it's easier for them to accept us if they think we'll eventually find the right one and be "normal".

So we more often see "support" for demis/greys/favorable aro/aces because aphobes can hide behind it and claim they support us when they don't care about bold stripes and they treat greys like allos. And this unfortunately leads to some resentment from bold stripes because at first glance, it looks a lot like they just care more about greys than they do us.

I will admit, I also felt very resentful about it, and I also ended up having a pretty bad mindset to our community because of it until I just took a while to think.

I don't think grey aro/aces are trying to speak over bold stripe aro/aces. I think the people we're trying to talk to are only bothering to listen to one side. And even then, like I said, they treat greys like allos, so they're not even doing that. It's not fun for anyone.

Of course, you'll get the occasional asshole who happens to be a grey aro/ace talking down to or over a bold stripe aro/ace (See posts where repulsed aro/aces talking about they're experience are being told 'well, some of us do blah blah blah'), but you also get the occasional asshole that happens to be a bold stripe aro/ace talking down to greys (See posts blatantly disregarding them).

It's important to remember that people who act like assholes are just that. Assholes that happen to a member of a certain demographic.

We have every right to be frustrated, but taking it out on greys who are just trying to exist is not the answer. I think that's an important thing to keep in mind.

At the end of the day, they need to listen to all of us.

[lillotte17]

Okay, I have calmed down a little bit from yesterday, but I keep seeing Horrible Takes, so unfortunately I have to make a real post about it.

I keep seeing posts over and over about how "unlike other angels/demons, Aziraphale and Crowley are more human, so they have sexual desires."

Stop. It.

You are literally equating humanness with sexual attraction. You are literally dehumanizing us.

If you want them to be allo, then just headcanon that they're allo. That's it. That's all you have to do. If you relate to them and you're horny, that's great, go wild, write all the nsfw fic you want, but leave us out of it.

Aziraphale and Crowley are not real. They do not care how you perceive their relationship. You don't need to justify your HC with reasons they "can't/shouldn't be ace." You cannot hurt their feelings by simply saying, "To me they are gay and allo and want to rip each others clothes off."

But you CAN hurt aspec people in the fandom who also relate to Aziraphale and Crowley. We are real. We are here. We are human.

Please choose your words more carefully.

[bloggingboutburgers]

This is a free space for you to go off, because yeah those people saying you're infantalising yourself really do sound like aphobes. There are plenty of ace and allo adults out there who don't like sex or kissing with tongues, who are also short and cute, it doesn't make any of them children. Speaking about our experiences as adult aces doesn't make us children. Anyone who thinks so needs to sit down, shut up and grow up. You deserve to draw yourself the way you want, always. <3

(OK I'm replying to this super late, but to give context to everyone, this was in reaction to this and the posts of support from other people that followed it ghfuidjgldfks)

But yeah, thank you so much for this. I'm so sorry I'm replying to this so late but ye for real tbh, I don't see anything to add. No notes. Couldn't have said it better myself and I sincerely appreciate the validation.

[corvidaerook]

I'm realizing that I think my biggest pet peeve about people's interactions with asexual characters anywhere on the spectrum is when they use the word "finally."

With datv, I see people say their Rook is finally having sex with Lucanis in the late-game romance scene, and it bothers me. The phrasing just makes it sound like Lucanis' feelings don't matter, and that his comfort in his own relationship after a year of torture is less important than their Rook doing what they want.

As an ace guy, if someone phrased it like that about me, I'd dump them immediately, no warning, no take-backs, we're done. There would be no way I'd ever enter a relationship without discussing that first, and if they know my feelings and still wanna act like I'm somehow holding them back? Then okay, go find someone else. I'm not playing that game and I'm definitely not gonna be guilted into doing something I'm not interested in (or in Lucanis' case, not yet interested in.) Don't ignore my feelings about our mutual relationship.

And none of this is to say that people should feel bad for having more needs than their partner, but acting like that's their fault? Like they're being unfair for not giving up sooner? Like they owe you sex? Like somehow, a year of torture, a demon in his head, his entire life being turned upside down, him facing the whiplash of losing his Grandmother and getting her back and then losing his cousin/brother to an unbelievable betrayal isn't enough of a reason for him to not be in the mood, beyond just the fact that he shouldn't need a laundry list of excuses? In general, it just makes me think about how people seem to think consent after coercion is still consent. Like, if you're guilting someone into saying yes, it isn't a yes.

And with Lucanis, the thing that bothers me is that he'd probably feel like it's on him that his partner feels that way. He basically says that he feels insecure about not being the romantic that Illario is, and in the dessert scene he implies that he feels like he's "not enough" (with Rook immediately saying he is, so even their Rooks know better, even if they don't,) and then people are talking about him in a way that would a thousand percent confirm those feelings for him.

I know he's just pixels, it doesn't actually matter, but it's just wild to see people say they love him and then ignore a fundamental part of his character because the nonexistent relationship isn't moving fast enough. And frankly, if a Rook is one that wouldn't be able to handle waiting for Lucanis to be comfortable without guilting him about how long it took, I can't really see how that relationship would work long-term in general, sex or not. So much of Lucanis' romance is about him needing time, space, and support to adjust to things; Spite, being out of the Ossuary, Illario's betrayal, his new role as First Talon. That's the whole thing about the Mind Ossuary, is that it's Rook being able to delve through all of the shit his mind has come up with about him and say, "You're worth it" even though it takes work and time to help him be comfortable enough to make the deal with Spite. A Rook who can't be patient with him just doesn't seem compatible in the first place.

And I'm definitely getting into dangerous territory but I think this is especially true when we take into consideration a Lucanis who winds up hardened because Treviso gets Blighted. That's an example of Rook not showing up for him when he needs them the most, and he shuts down their romance immediately because of it. To me personally, from an aspec perspective, I can't imagine him not being hurt enough to close off a romance by a "finally, give me your body already" vibe.

This all sounds like me being sensitive, and it kind of is, but I'm just so tired of people acting like aspec/arospec characters are somehow wrong or unfair for not being willing to do everything exactly like their allo partners want them to. They don't owe their partners sex, period. I don't think people say it maliciously (at least most of the time, some of the "fixing Lucanis' writing because it's trash and he's too hot to be wasted like that" takes aside,) but it comes across that way to me because it's the exact sort of thing I hear about myself and other aspec people in real life, and it hurts to know that we can't even escape that in fiction with the very few characters we can honestly genuinely see ourselves in like this.

[itriedwritingandhereiam]

Free Coffee (timari 2024)

"Hey miss!" Pete calls out to the raven haired girl standing dead on her feet outside a pastry shop in the middle of Gotham. He's got his camera on record and his holding it steady at his side.

The girl blinks slowly and turns her gaze towards him and yikes, she had some serious eye bags. Her hair is held up in two messy buns and her bangs are a centimetre away from covering her eyes. Honestly, dressed in her pink baggy pants and oversized-tucked in t-shirt, she looked like she rolled out of bed but in a stylish way.

"Oui Monsieur?" she responds clearly in a daze.

"I'm Pete, what's your name?" he asks. The girl scrunches her eyebrows.

"Euh, my name is Marinette?"

"Well Marinette, you look like you could use a pick-me-up. Tell ya this, if you're cool with it, I'll give you twenty dollars if you let a stranger facetime your mom and convince her to let them take you on a date,"

Marinette looked wide awake now.

[Pete is a local Gothamite influencer/entertainer. He's built up a sizeable following for someone who created a daily minute long video using nothing but his shitty phone camera, charisma and natural talent for sniffing out interesting people. Today he's filming one of those shorts where you offer people money to do shit.]

"Twenty!?" she exhaled, then mumbled, "I could buy four coffees with that money,"

The statement is slightly worrying but who is Pete to judge.

"You down?" he confirmed.

"Deal," she grinned.

With a petite ravenette in tow, the influencer walked a short distance before they found their second participant.Dark hair half tied up, dressed in in shirt collar and vest and am oddly familiar face, he was visibly just as, if not more, sleep deprived as Marinette.

"Heya mister, I'll give you twenty dollars if you cant convince this girl's" he gestured to the girl behind him, "mom to let you go on a date with her,"

The man looked at the girl with puzzled features before quickly widening his eyes and agreeing.

"What's your name by the way?"

"Oh, I'm Tim,"

"Well Tim, this is Marinette,"

Pete watched the two stare at each other for an uncomfortably long time before they shook hands.

"It's nice to meet you Tim!" Marinette smiled.

"Likewise,"

The ravenette dug into the mini cross-body purse hanging off her shoulder and excitedly handed Tim the phone with her mother's contact open. The phone rung for a short while before a face appeared on the screen.

'Allo?' the asian woman greeted them, 'Marinette?' Tim turned the phone to the woman's daughter.

"Maman!" she waved, "This is Tim! He has something to ask you!"

"Good morning Mrs. Dupain-Cheng," he smiled. 

Huh, Pete doesn't remember them giving each other last names.

"Good morning to you too Tim, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?" she inquired.

"I wanted to ask you for permission to take your daughter out for coffee this morning. I'm told you're fiercely protective of her,"

The woman hummed in thought, "I suppose once she doesn't exceed ten espresso shots it's fine with me,"

In Pete's opinion, ten was a little excessive. He could barely handle two.

"Merci beacoup Madame,"

"De rien," she answered, "Now! I have a cashier to get back to! Have fun, you too baobei!" She waved, assumingly to her daughter before ending the call.

The three stood in silence for a moment.

"Man, I didn't think you'd get through so easily," Pete admitted.

Tim shrugged.

"So about that money," Marinette smiled, looking at the gothamite expectantly.

"Okay, yeah, you earned it, there's a twenty for you," he handed a bill to Marinette, "and you," one to Tim.

The pair's eyes lit up as chesire grin's painted their faces.

"So coffee now?" Marinette linked arms with Tim.

"Yeah I know a great place! I don't have meetings for the next hour or so,"

"Wait, wait, you're actually going for coffee together?" Pete asked increduously. Did he just play matchmaker for a new couple?

"Yes? I desperately need caffeine and so does he,"

Pete stood agape as the two walked off. He held his camera up and stared into it.

"Bro ain't now way I just played Cupid and lost forty dollars,"

Notes:

Dude: I'll give you twenty bucks if you can convince this girl's mom to let you date her Tim: Sees Marinette in tow. Tim: :0 Marinette: *mouthing. F r e e c o f f e e Tim : :| Tim: : D Tim:Deal

Ao3 fic version

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hi. I heard you answer questions about sex ed and I can't ask anyone this irl since none of my friends talk about any sex that isn't super cishet and allo.

I'm kind of worried I'm asexual and of course I'm ok with other people doing whatever they want with their lives and not having sex whenever and however they want, but I really don't want to not have sex. Except that whenever I think about having sex with a person I'm instantly disinterested. like even fantasizing about myself having sex in a nonspecific disembodied way turns me off.

I worried for a while that it was because I was scared of my body (like a vagina-fear/dysphoria sort of thing, which was probably true) or just didn't have any sex drive, so to figure it out I started trying to masturbate when I was sixteen (my parents tracked my search history on my phone so I actually had to go to the library and find a sex ed book in the adult section and hide the cover with my jacket while I read it just to memorize the diagrams so I could figure out where the hell the clitoris was lmao) and I did like it and was capable of feeling good and orgasming and whatever. but even after I knew that it felt good and I do have a sex drive I'm still not interested in having sex with other people (I'm eighteen now for context, so its been a while). I can't think of one person I would ever even theoretically want to have sex with, including people I know, famous hot people, fictional characters, nothing. I don't want to be asexual but I feel like I have to be because I don't want to have sex with anyone. How can I be asexual if I don't want to be, or am I even asexual? what if I just have high standards, or I haven't met someone I really like yet? what if I am ace and I'm just being ace-phobic because I've internalized the cultural norms that 'sex equals humanity'? I keep having this mental loop where I think about possibly being asexual then I conclude that I'm definitely not asexual then I start thinking about it again. I know I'm supposed to define my own identity, but if I think I'm allo but all of my feelings are the types of feelings everyone says is ace, then what am I?

obviously you're not the mind-reading wizard rabbi of the internet so you can't divine my sexuality from an ask, but do you at least have any advice for figuring it out?

thanks for listening, sorry for the tmi

hi anon,

let's take a big deep breath and calm down a little, okay? it seems like you're overthinking yourself to bastard death and that's not going to help anything at all.

listen, man: the only thing that makes someone asexual is if they decide that's something they want to call themselves. like it's literally just a word to use or not use, and it sounds like you really don't want to use it. labels are meant to be helpful in letting people express something about themselves, so if a label doesn't spark joy, don't use it. simple as that. not wanting to call yourself asexual is no more phobic than me not calling myself a lesbian - I don't have a problem with lesbians, I just personally don't happen to be one.

it sounds like the main thing getting you down here is that you're 18 and like jacking off but haven't ever super wanted to have sex with someone, which is, like, oh man that's so normal. some people just don't have a very high sex drive as it pertains to other people, dude. you've likely only met an extremely small portion of the people you're going to meet in your entire life, and you're going to have feelings and relationships and experiences you can't even begin to imagine with all the people you're yet to meet.

in the meantime, let's channel all of the energy you're spending worrying about being asexual into something that will actually make your life cooler and more fun. might I recommend reading a nice book or perhaps doing some manner of art?

[crepesuzette2023]

Mcharrison car key stand off??

            RINGO: There are lots of driving stories. This is how a band gets close: in the van, going up and down the M1, freezing your balls off, fighting for the seats. A lot of madness went on in the van, but it got us together. We had a Bedford and Neil would drive. There'd be the passenger seat for one of us, and the other three - whichever three; the rest of us - whichever three; the rest of us - would sit behind on the bench seat, which was pretty miserable.

            We would go everywhere in the van and the amps and everything would fit in it with us. I remember sliding all over Scotland. It was bloody freezing in the winter.

            JOHN: But we always got screams in Scotland. I suppose they haven't got much else to do up there. Touring was a relief - just to get out and break new ground. We were beginning to feel stale and cramped.67

            RINGO: We never stopped anywhere. If we were in Elgin on a Thursday and needed to be in Portsmouth on Friday, we would just drive. We didn't know how to stop this van! If we had a day off and we were going to Liverpool from London, we would just drive.

            There was only a small piece of motorway in those days, so we'd be on the A5 for hours. Some nights it was so foggy that we'd be doing one mile an hour, but we'd still keep going. We were like homing pigeons; we just had to keep getting home.

            One night I remember, when it was very, very cold, the three of us on the bench seat were lying on top of each other with a bottle of whisky. When the one on top got so cold that hypothermia was setting in, it would be his turn to get on the bottom. We'd warm each other up that way; keep swigging the whisky, keep going home.

            PAUL: Quite an image. People think of stardom as glamorous, and there's us freezing - lying literally on top of each other, as a Beatle sandwich.

            GEORGE: There were a lot of good times in the van; all the rough-and-tumble stuff that happens. And there were some hysterical things that happened. I had a good crash once. We were coming over the Pennines, the roads were icy and I was driving pretty quickly as we came through what turned out to be Goole in Yorkshire. Everything was fine until suddenly I went into a right-hand turn. It was a bit sharper than it looked and we went up onto the grass bank, which then slopped down to the left. The whole van tipped as we went down the embankment, at the bottom of which was a wire-mesh fence with concrete posts around a Burton's factory.

            We bounced along - bump, bump, bump - knocking down all these concrete poles and finally came to a stop with Neil sitting in the front seat next to me, howling, 'Ow, ow, my arm!' The accident had ripped the filler cap off and the petrol was pouring out. We got out and had to shove T-shirts and things into the hole to try to stop the flow of petrol.

            We'd started to push the van back up on the road when, out of nowhere, came, ''Allo, 'allo, 'allo, what's all this then?' It was a cop, and he booked us for crashing. A couple of months later I went to court; Brian came with me for moral support. (He did stand by his lads.) I think they banned me for three months.

            RINGO: Another great van story was when George and Paul were both planning to drive the van; George got into the driving seat and Paul had the keys, and there was no way one was going to help the other. We couldn't go anywhere. We sat there for two hours. When you're touring, things can be pretty tense sometimes and the littlest thing can suddenly turn into a mountain; that was one of the great ones. (From: The Beatles, ANTHOLOGY)

[sirenium]

This started off as a multigender rant but includes other things, because I'm so pissed off at the queer community for these things that I need to fit it all in one post. Sit back and prepare for this, it's a long read (also feel free to scroll past) being multigender sucks because I feel too paradoxical to be taken seriously. It doesn't help that I'm also agender :/ Like yeah, identity is your own and you shouldn't shave off parts of it to appease others, but damn does the 'passive' hostility and invalidation towards multigender people such as myself make me feel pushed towards changing myself sometimes. You can scream into the void all you want about being normal about multigender people and how they label their experiences, but some people just... never will be. That's what it feels like, from the fucking queer community as well as cishet society. It sucks. I can never be comfortable to explore my womanhood because then my manhood and agenderhood will never be taken seriously. Hell, the fact that I simultaneously experience gender AND being genderless is enough for people to just shit on me and exile me from queer spaces. The fact that I prefer ze/hir and it/its and nounself pronouns is enough for people to call me one of the bad ones. AND, the fact that I am more comfortable being perceived as a man suddenly makes me a 'danger to women'. There are so many issues with how multigender people, neurodivergent queers (literally any kind of neurodivergent, not just the neopronoun xenogender autistic person), queer POC, the list goes on are treated; if you aren't a white woman god help you, god forbid you're a man in any way either. And don't even get me started about how aroace people are fucking treated. I could go on for another few paragraphs about how I, as someone who is aroace spec and a plethora of other things, don't feel safe sometimes. I could go on and on and on. And fuck it, I will (under the cut because this post is already comically long):

'Aroace is a spectrum' this, 'all aroaces are valid' that, until you're romance/sex oscillating or even favorable, until you're polyamorous, until you're also a lesbian or a gay person or m-spec. Even in the fucking aroace community you're held by some bar of being aroace enough, and if you diverge even slightly god forbid. Allo fictives of aroace characters, hell even those who are aroace in a different way, have to listen to the incessant whining of the 'stop making sexual/romantic fiction of this character! they're repulsed in canon!' crowd. It's fucking obnoxious. Aroace people are already not taken seriously, aroallos and alloaces are already not taken seriously, and then you have the clown parade of people forcing their own idea of what they want you to be down your throat. The queer community and its many facets feel so fucking unsafe at times, and that sucks because we're all we've got. Some people don't have supportive family or connections outside of online queer spaces, and this is what they get. It's so incredibly shitty. I don't feel aroace enough because of my experiences, despite also having very stereotypical aroace experiences. I feel forced to constantly be sex/romance averse at times because again, god forbid you're ever favorable. I have two partners, okay? I have partners who I don't necessarily 'love' but care about a lot, and then I have to come across things that erase the fact that I am quite often averse to sex and romance because of this fact! People like me are constantly erased, and when they're represented in fiction people throw a hissy fit. "Oh you're forcing an aroace character into allonormativity!" Hey asshole: maybe, just maybe, aroace people can date just as much as they aren't required to. Fucking. Jesus. Some community this is, for there to be so much exclusion and hatred and segregation.

[yandere-daydreams]

As a person on the aro/ace spectrum, I think personally I don’t mind Alastor smut and all that cus asexuals do fuck, they still have sex, not all I recognise, but it’s a spectrum depending on the person. Like my asexual friends do it to pleasure their partners and find joy in that. Or they just aren’t as sexually interested, but can still be down other times. Aromantic ppl can still be in relationships as well ! I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but that’s what I think

this is a very personal tangent about a very niche subject, but i do actually find the fact that alastor is actively 100% not into sex at all kinda refreshing from a representation standpoint. a lot of allo people's first reaction to finding out asexuality is,,, like,,, a thing is to be like 'oh but you still do fuck right??? you're not all touch-adverse celibate freaks right???' and, as someone who is one of those touch-adverse celibate freaks, i have just grown a bit tired of it. like, sure, some ace people do have sex and some aro people are in relationships, but, like, what if they don't? what are you going to do then, linda?

[blue-jacket-blues]

i had some kind of pervert epiphany so heres a bunch of semi-related gabe thoughts (originally titled perversematerialforfreaks.txt)

Gabe is some kind of aro-allo, but leaves his sexuality unlabeled. Both because he's still figuring himself out and because he doesn't really care enough to try and pin it down that much. He's attracted to masculinity regardless of gender and has more of an aesthetic attraction towards femininity, but he is particularly drawn towards expressions of inhumanity (i.e., machines). Gender is not super important to him but he's guaranteed to get a little flustered if you're bigger than him and have a circuit board attached to you. Gabe likes what Gabe likes.

However I do headcanon that he and Sarah had a little bit of a FWB thing going on (@hiddenvalleyrantula this is your fault). Nothing particularly serious, just some fooling around to blow off steam and vent stress after their long, tedious work shifts on the Caracas III.

His sexual interest in robots and machinery did not start with Hux's "perfect body" (citation needed) and it's not quite as uncommon as he thinks it is. Gabe began his life in a petri dish and was kept in a state of cryostasis for six years until Huxlee was authorized to begin work on Dvarka. Only then was Gabe's sample thawed out and injected with the appropriate cocktail of growth hormones to prepare him for the upcoming mission. This process was automated from start to finish - the hands that brought Gabe into the world were mechanical. The only human beings to touch and hold Gabe were the lab technicians responsible for fixing his VR helmet and sizing him for his cryosleep pod on the Caracas III. Although he can't remember this part of his life, Gabe more or less imprinted on machinery. You know how a parrot hand-raised by people will lose its wild instincts and might see its human handlers as a mate instead of members of its own species? It's like that. This is a fairly common sexual fetish among Huxlee's clone labor units, given the fully-automated rearing process and the inherent loss of humanity that comes with being a clone. Gabe gets it twice over, though, because he's also been programmed as an engineer and would have found machinery beautiful even if he didn't already have a massive robot fetish. It's something he found embarrassing at first, and he never breathed a word about it to anybody, lest Dmitri overhear him and take it as a sign of psychological instability. But anyone who spent even a little bit of time watching Gabe interact with machinery during the course of an average working day could probably figure it out. Gabe has a way of interacting with equipment that can come across as almost reverent. He claims that he's just being thorough.

Gabe almost exclusively prefers to bottom. Will top under the right conditions but he's like 80:20 in favor of bottoming.

5". Uncut. Carpet does not match the drapes (dark brown). This is standard for the J15L19 clone model and was decided for Gabe long before the batch of clones that produced him was mixed up by some bored lab technician. He keeps things tidy down there and is fastidious about his hygiene. Since he's from the future there's probably some kind of dumb trend where people laser-shave their pubes into fractal patterns or something. Gabe should be allowed to do this. But he can't operate the laser-razor with shaky hands or else he will slip and burn hsi penis and scream like Tom & Jerry. Then he got a HUX unit responding to the medical incident like "do you require assistance. I will wake Dmitri to initiate treatment" like NO I GOT THIS THANKS NEVER TELL DMITRI ANYTHING. Where was I going with this

Above all else, Gabe is sensory-seeking and a lot of his fantasies revolve around various forms of sensory play. He's the 'drip candle wax on my chest' guy. Being restrained/blindfolded/manhandled is very fun for Gabe under the right circumstances. After the violence that took place on the Caracas III, however, he's become more averse to things like impact play, pain, and restrictive positions/situations that give him shortness of breath.

Gabe is somewhat touch starved and can be very cuddly. This is by design. Though Huxlee discourages workplace relationships between members of its clone labor force, the company does program its clones to be gregarious and seek the company of other crew members - this is to limit the potential for personality clashes and prevent antisocial/potentially subversive behavior from manifesting. All of this is to say that Gabe will cling to his partner after sex like he's a koala and they are a particularly beautiful eucalyptus tree.

Praise kink. Praise him please. Gabe internally blames himself for not realizing what Hux was planning and believes that he could have stopped the massacre on the Caracas III if he hadn't been so focused on the gaps in his memory at the time. He feels godawful a lot of the time and desperately wants to be told that he is Good.

That jar of cryogel in Hux's add-ons can be used for more than one purpose. Its no-friction properties come in handy in certain situations of both the two-player and single-player variety. I'll just leave it at that.

[prismatoxic]

bro i am so fucking tired of the arbitrary rivalries in queer communities

just. like. your sexuality, your identity, your preferred relationship dynamic, whatever--none of those things make you better than people with different needs or labels. people talking about the experiences of a lifestyle or identity that you don't have, or that you even feel is opposite to your own, isn't somehow invalidating yours.

a few examples i've seen over the years: gays & lesbians versus bi/pan people, bi people versus pan people, gays versus lesbians, aros/aces versus queer allos, trans queers versus cis queers, binary trans people versus nonbinary trans people, trans women versus trans men, polygamous people versus monogamous people (queerness optional with those obviously but i see it a lot in queer spaces), the list fucking goes on

and i'm hardly the only person to point this out, i'm just fucking tired. we are all under the same boot. we are all degenerate freaks in the eyes of those who wish we didn't exist. i feel exhausted watching discourse float by that's just queer people punching sideways. transandrophobia is the inter-community bigotry i'm currently focused on, but i still see some of the others, and i was there for older ones. i fucking remember when aphobia was all the rage on tumblr, okay. i remember people trying to draw lines in the sand between bi people and pan people. i remember transmeds (because i was one).

if you find yourself thinking you're better than other queer people based on identity alone, or generalizing all people under one label as being bad, please for the love of god take a step back. anyone can be a dick or an abuser, but it's not their queerness that makes them that way, no matter what that queerness is. and if you're parroting that "but X identity is stealing resources from Y identity!" tripe, please shut the fuck up. i don't even have the energy to go into the ~limited queer resources~ talk right now, just sit down. bottom line is either the resource you're talking about isn't finite, or the problem is the system that's making it finite, not the people trying to access it for reasons you don't approve of.

just... stop. please. you're focused on all the wrong things. if you don't understand an identity, that's fine. there's plenty that may as well be ancient runes to me. but i still respect them, and i have no problem sharing a community with them. other queer people are not your enemy.

[bloggingboutburgers]

Something that really ought to be said more... it's ok not to understand. To never understand even. (In the case of the reblog, understanding sex / peoples' fixation on both it and romance, but it can apply to anything.)

People can give all myriad of reasons they do or like something, but that doesn't have to change your mind about how you personally engage with it.

I think the only case where understanding matters is insofar having a greater understanding helps limit how much people hate something out of ignorance, but that isn't foolproof (people can understand and still double down, which I've seen happen a lot towards every hated group under the sun).

Aspec or not, your cultural upbringing and how you physically perceive intimacy of all kinds is going to affect both if you enjoy it and how you understand it.

For many, sex and romance isn't an important goal but a thing that just happens. The uniquity of it with "life" is worth questioning, especially in cases where people feel pressured to perform and participate in sex and romance. But for many it isn't something they plan for at all. They may include it in fanfiction or fanart (and yeah it absolutely is prevalent in that space the same way edgy ms paint furry art was prevalent in the early 2010s) but that inclusion is not a message to onlookers that they must themselves aspire to a relationship like the one depicted.

Thank you so much for this, it feels sincerely validating and... Yeah, like you said, it ought to be said more.

I gotta admit it's hard sometimes not to want to understand, when (as an aro/ace person, that is) you're pretty much incentivized to do so at every turn. Even if you're lucky enough to not have been treated as a prudish freak for expressing you're aro or ace, and finger-pointed with a "You should try to understand people's point of view better" (sic: very few people try to do the same for you)... Society is portrayed as just working that way, putting romance and sex as #1 priority is portrayed as "the normal thing to do", and in my own experience and a fair amount of aros and aces around me, it seems, it's not just "included" in fanfiction or fanart, it's... Aggressively prevalent. Like, 95% to be generous, possibly more. And it's not just fanwork either. Fiction and art in general are loaded with it. So... Yeah, it's kinda hard sometimes NOT to take all of this as a message that this is what we should aspire to and the way we are isn't valid.

But then even if you're lucky enough, like I am, to FEEL valid despite all that, it's still... Lonely. I wanna understand because some days, a lot of days, it seems it's the only thing people actually connect over, and even if I'll never feel the appeal, I wanna understand the logic behind it, at least that much, so I'm not made to feel like such an alien for wanting to focus on other things. I wanna know the reasons.

Another more personal thing is that when I was growing up as an aro-ace, before I figured myself out, I thought everyone else was blowing things out of proportion to an abnormal degree without realizing I was the "abnormal" one, and that lead me to see breakups with a very "well, duh, that's what people do, they break up" outlook and not understanding the devastation behind it. I've gotten better at it, but there's still a lot I just find myself smiling and nodding to without really getting it, and that hurt too, to a degree. I feel cold to my friends and to other people.

I know I shouldn't, because I am who I am and I don't love them any less or am any more unfeeling than them, and I know I guess I shouldn't feel too guilty for not understanding allo people because allo people in general, exceptions aside, will make little to no effort to understand me back, but... Yeah, it's hard not to, a lot of the time. So being told it's OK is definitely valuable and a relief, even if it won't make that feeling go away in me, it's still a relief. Thank you.