#and she’s getting SO much hate and being called an aphobe when what she said literally had nothing to do with ace people

[janersm]

Every hashtag that an ableist, aphobic, biphobic TERF has made about me (so far) because she didn’t like that I said relationships involving bisexual people are inherently queer & told her not to call me bihet.

[Alt text for nine screenshots posted above:

#get a life you fucking loser #you're harassing me in my inbox like an insecure pathetic baby and self-victimizing yourself #and lying #who actually experiences oppression and vitriol is homosexuals #wah being told im privileged is oppression and hate #you're calling all gays hateful and evil saying they oppress you for being in het relationships Imao #you think sexuality is based on gender and not biological sex bc ur homophobic #once again by this logic straight men are gay if they date bi women and lesbians are het if they date bi women #stfu #stop erasing ppl bc you wanna be oppressed so bad #white woman cringe #gays have it easier because when they get hate crimed at least they know their entire sexual orientation #we're so lucky #for being validated before getting killed and beaten <3 #you can tell which bis have been w women be at least some of them will acknowledge the privilege they have when with men but still very few #and ive seen other bis dogpile them and accuse them of having internalized biphobia for saying they have privilege when dating and marrying #men #the white ppl of sexuality tbh

#can u imagine if you told a straight man he is feminine and in a feminine relationship or some shit for dating a woman #thats how crazy you sound #closest kinda of analogy i can think of at 4am #jfc #stop oppressing me for having a bf my relationship is gay so treat me like a gay person if you don't it's discrimination and erasure #but also according to her #heterosexual relationships are gay #braindead comment #i face the most homophobia bc i have a bf it's true #sorry gayz #???? #liberal brainrot #just switch words around and call it oppression #why are liberals all so narcisstic and toxic #they're so obsessed with telling minorities they are privileged and finding a way to say they aren't privileged be they think oppression is #fun and being privileged is boring #white as hell but acting like they're the biggest anti racists or anti oppression while they perpetuate it and deny their privileges and #intersections of their privileges #she's gonna say she's authority on racism now bc i can't say trans ideology and community is racist and white #w their own white supremacists

#and according to her the nasty gays (dirty perveted genital fetishists) and the monosexuals (straights) are harming the most oppressed and #neglected 'minorities' asexuals and bisexuals #imagine equating bisexual struggles to asexuals Imaooo #yikes #a self drag #don't erase yourself then complain :)) #stop saying hetero relationships are gay :)) #everytime a bi person says they're gay you're committing homophobia and erasure of two groups of people :)) #one of whom who faces real oppression for their sexuality #hint it's not the woman w the bf #she thinks she's authority on lesphobia/ homophobia then calls all gays biphobic privileged oppressors #even poc understand we have different struggles and privileges #it's so funny #how pathetic they are #so offended by having privilege #if you're gonna call yourself gay and your straight relationship gay #complaining about bihet is so hypocrital #i didn't even just say she's het Imao #i was gonna write up a post about this but it feels like a good place to discuss this #bi women just keep slapping us in the face acting like this and saying shit like this

#homegirl also said i ruined her sleep and made her take more meds #i didn't force you to stalk n harass me #i had this post so long i had to cut down so much of what i said #god she's annoying af #such a manipulative sad pathetic person obsessed with being a liberal victim #while she's literally mutals with TYGRESS #why can't they ever talk about how homophobic and misogynistic they are #i feel like for one thing #truly if bis stopped acting like women are just for fucking or not real partners / people for not being men then things would be different #i have a butch lesbian friend in kentucky #it's more unsafe to be a poc #anyway #bisexuals stop gasligting gay people challenge #she said she was going to bed and now she's watching her phone and refreshing my blog every second #YOU'RE CREEPY #looks like white men are rubbing off on you too much #your disability doesn't make you homophobic or a creepy stalker #that's 100% you #you're so creepy tbh #i dont think you know how blocking works #you literally brought it up as an abusive tactic to control a minority Imao when it isn't relevant

#to deflect from accountability and silence them #white behaviour #next you'll say being gay is an excuse to be racist #stfu #you're so obsessed with what ithink #it's really funny #you think lesbians can have dicks or like dick #you're pro conversion therapy #stay away from women but you probably will anyway thankfully #the fact you care so much what i think while speaking over me #if i acted like you a decade from now #at your age #yikesss #you're straight up stalking me and harassing me at this point Imao #<3 #you wanna play the liberal oppression card when you're a homophobic moron #i'm also a brown woman #so stfu #YOU STILL HAVE ME BLOCKED AND YOU'RE ENGAGING #HOW PATHETIC ARE YOU? #liberal cringe #gaslighting queen <3 #no patience #ur 95 percent and higher in het relationships exclusively #shut the fuck up #you don't know what vitrol or hate or oppression is #thats why you talk like this and act like #being hatecrimed makes you privileged <3 #i mean the gays practically do by denying my relationship isn't gay #so funny….they use the world queer

#by funny i mean sick #A SLUR AIMED AT HOMOSEXUALS FOR BEING GAY #WHO DIED OFTEN AFTER HEARING THAT WORD OR GETTING BEATEN TO NEAR DEATH #haha my relationship is queer <3 ur not even GAY ur bi and never date women or seriously #then you complain erasure #racist/homophobic/ misogynistic content my bi heart <3 #says people some get treated worse but then denies privilege #bc funny who is it they argue who always have privilege? FEMALES AND HOMOSEXUALS #NOT BISEXUALS AND MALES #B & T community are evil #males and osa are the most oppressed and females/ homosexuals are the most privileged <3 #what is gay privilege #you can't name one #bc it doesn't exist #if you deemed content biphobic you'd lose ur shit and never watch it tho #but heterophobic content doesn't exist :)) #and i'm every single terf when i'm not even a radfem #i think this drama is really funny tbh #you might as well be bc ur all cliche and homophobic #cry #if you cared about being productive you wouldn't be here

#it's so funny how your media consumption is literally all about misogynistic/ homophobic/racist white men #it's funny how cliche you are #you're so mad that i have a brain and you don't #keep crying <3 #talking about homophobic people and calling them out is doing something also tbh #you're such a hypocrite #you think you're fighting heterophobia #but you're just homophobic #spreading bs #you're really narcissistic and manipulative <3 #i'm glad you don't have a gf #you're homophobic and are obsessed with victimizing yourself #there is no such thing as discrimination for opposite sex attraction #it's a privilege #how aren't het women more offended that bi women act like they're suffering so much bc of het woman while y'all live the same lifestyles #for the rest of your lives... #oh right it's that homophobic pact. #they seem to have #remember when a bisexual woman married to a man said she was JEALOUS of gay men at pride #your pride is there everyday every second of your life and rewarded and centred #privileged #ifcc

#you're erasing gay people and being a hypocrite #and you're erasing straight people #so funny you're so pissed off youre called out on how stupid you are you're stalking my blog #if you were so confident you wouldn't take me seriously #you're in a privileged relationship #you have osa privilege #your relationship is straight even if you aren't #you're gonna call gays and straights bis #then don't whine when you feel erased #calling ur relationship het isn't even erasure #biphobia isn't real #you just think heterophobia is real and that gays oppress you #run to your boyfriend and cry how some actual gay person thinks you aren't oppressed #this is the straightest bio i've ever read #you can tell which bis have been w women bc at least some of them will acknowledge the privilege they have when with men but still very few #and ive seen other bis dogpile them and accuse them of having internalized biphobia for saying they have privilege when dating and marrying #men #the white ppl of sexuality tbh #can u imagine if you told a straight man he is feminine and in a feminine relationship or some shit for dating a woman

#thats how crazy you sound #closest kinda of analogy i can think of at 4am #jfc #stop oppressing me for having a bf my relationship is gay so treat me like a gay person if you don't it's discrimination and erasure #why are bihets like this... #holy shit #my straight relationship is gay/queer and if you don't agree you're heterophobic]

She has her friends monitoring my blog and encourages people in posts to bother me, but accuses me of stalking and harassing her when I haven’t said a damn thing to her in weeks. The only reason I even go to her blog is to make sure I have blocked every single person who she’s talking shit about me with & encouraging to come after me.

Also, who even is tygress? And how does she know who I’m mutuals with? My following list is private.

#desisapphic #the terfs are not alright #ableism #mental health stigma #biphobia #homophobia #aphobia #acephobia #queer #queer pride #lgbtq #bisexuality #bisexual #bi erasure #stigma

[kuraagins]

Can people PLEASE stop attacking lesbians during pride month holy fuck just say you hate us and go

#for context: a girl made a tiktok about how the split attraction model is harmful to young lesbians who are experiencing comphet #and she’s getting SO much hate and being called an aphobe when what she said literally had nothing to do with ace people #also the ‘reading the SCARY lesbian masterdoc’ trend is back #I’m fucking exhausted lol

[lanawinterscigarettes]

First I want to state that I just want to give my very calm take on this whole Yelena aroace discourse, I’m not trying to attack or erase anyone’s identity:

Here’s the thing, that panel that ppl keep saying is proof that she’s ace? It’s not about that, they’re taking it out of context, the whole page gives it a completely different meaning. It’s more about how Yelena doesn’t think she’s a person, kinda how Natasha says she has no place in the world during the Wanda induced flashbacks in Age of Ultron. Just because there’s some who want to interpret it as her saying she’s asexual doesn’t mean that’s what she’s saying or that it’s canon, that’s not how that works.

And the writer has said in a very recent (as in earlier this month) blog post that, when Yelena (the one that was born, not the clone) was first created, the terms asexual, aromantic or aroace did not exist, and even if they did, Yelena wouldn’t have known about them because Russia is very conservative and if she had hinted at being ANYTHING other than cishet she would have most likely been jailed or persecuted bc that’s a reality for LGBTQ+ Russians even to this day, and Yelena would have been living in Russia back in the 70s-90s.

She also said that when people ask about her sexuality, she can imagine her being ace making sense and would hope that was the case but she has no say in the matter because she doesn’t own the character and her opinions aren’t more right than that of the fans. She literally said she gives us her blessing to interpret Yelena however we want and to be kind to one another. She said that at this point her own opinions are pretty much headcanons as well. She also said that if Yelena was to date anyone it would make sense for it to be a woman.

Finally, she also said not to expect a big corporation like Marvel/Disney to give you the representation you deserve because more often than not, they won’t do a good job at it and probably won’t even attempt to unless it benefits them, which is true.

Here’s a thread that goes into further detail about other things about Yelena that pretty much let you know she’s never truly been aroace in the comics:

https: //clarabelacqua(.)tumblr(.)com/post/671418171845115904/yelena-is-aroace-why-is-it-so-hard-for-you-to

I’m not trying to be mean or erase anyone’s identity. I’m a lesbian, I’ve had such a hard time finding representation where we don’t die or we aren’t cheaters or we get a genuinely good ending, I know that’s still more than aroace people have gotten. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade bc I know what it’s like to headcanon a character in a certain way and have others give you shit for it.

I do however want to say that the hate and harassment that can be found under posts that talk about Kate and Yelena is disgusting. You can’t tell someone not to ship fictional characters or to do it in x or y way. You can’t call someone aphobic just because they don’t agree with you, a lot of the ops responding agree that Yelena should be ace in the mcu and they hope you all get that representation. But in all the comment sections I’ve seen it’s like talking to a wall. I get the anger, but that’s simply not going to make anyone listen to y’all, unfortunately it’s gonna give you a rep. I’ve said this before, people don’t think you’re annoying for wanting representation, we all do. People think it’s annoying to be called a bigot or an aphobe for minding their business online. They will respond and be petty and it’s not pretty. They aren’t fighting you on Yelena being aroace, a lot of the time it’s an aroace person under their post on the shipping tag being genuinely mean and unnecessarily rude. Maybe it would be better if those who don’t like something simply block the tag and avoid those posts, because seriously, they’re clearly not for you, so maybe don’t interact with those…

I genuinely hope this doesn’t go on for much longer because Yelena is such a good character that deserves all the love she gets, and ultimately, people will headcanon her as they please. It would be so good to simply enjoy that in peace.

.

#I personally don't believe I'm educated enough on the topic of this matter to be able to comment #seeing as I'm not ace or aro or on the asp #*aspectrum #what are ypur guys opinion on this? #aeron answers #aro #ace #aromantic #asexual #aroace #aspec #yelena belova #mcu

[arcadialedger]

Please note that I am most likely leaving this platform. I am done being abused. But first? We need to have a discussion. A discussion about hate and bullying in fandom.

All online-- I encourage you to read my story below. Reblog and spread awareness. The Dragon Prince fandom especially -- I implore you read my words, every single one of them. The short of it is that I am done. 

This all began with losing and being blocked by a friend because I shared something they disagreed with. I don’t care what you feel about my initial reaction to this (which I’ll explain below) -- I’ve apologized for not handling the situation correctly. But I will not be shamed for speaking my mind and standing up for myself.

Because no human being deserves to go through what I have endured since last summer.

Following the “callout” post made about me by one of, if not the largest blogs in this fandom, I received hundreds of threats, harassment messages, and death threats. Messages and posts telling me to kill myself were also prominent, on a multiple times a week basis for awhile.

Messages from people who were well aware I have struggled with being suicidal. Due to one of their favorite Dragon Prince blogs speaking out against me, they thought it was okay to suicide bait me.

And it worked. I already struggle with hating myself, am already insecure, and being flooded with these comments which, while I made mistakes, did nothing to deserve, drove me to try and take my own life after years of progress in my mental health.  

Mind you, this is like a 200 follower to 4k follower power dynamic. Which yes, plays a role-- because when you have a large following and influence, you have power. Yet the person behind this had the gall to claim Tumblr clout isn’t real.

People blocking and condemning others instantly at your word? Is power. If people read your words and are influenced, or have their minds changed, or buy or don’t buy something, etc.-- you are an influencer. You have power. And when you’re one of the largest blogs in a fandom, you have a LOT of power.

So take responsibility. 

I was hurt because I lost a friend who I had chatted with for months, did a podcast with, and was generally not only one of my favorite blogs but the center of my experience in the Dragon Prince. I may not have been perfect in my words, but when I was asked why I was quiet/ inactive, I explained how I was hurting, anonymously. I was understandably in pain and upset. I had been cut off for just having a different opinion on a matter, for thinking differently. Even though it was within their rights to block and do so, it felt wrong and it weighed on me.

Is that such a crime?

The callout post and previously described abuse followed, lasting for months until later in the year (this began in June, or around then). It also included screenshots of tweets, when this user does not have Tumblr, and they have stated to have screenshots stored up on their computer of my various posts and interactions. This is creepy behavior, and freaked me out. I felt like I was being stalked, “evidence” being filed away for the very purpose of being used against me. 

I eventually talked things out with the blog per recommendation of my therapist, and thought all would be fine. For a little while, it was. I largely stayed off of Tumblr to heal. Once in awhile I would have a rough, tearful night because something reminded me of what I lost, but I would make it through. Overall, I was making progress.

Then? My Twitter got hacked by one of the people sending me hate. For what had turned out to be much. And after they tweeted some purposefully incriminating and bigoted things to make me look bad, I came home from a weekend in the mountains to a shitstorm.

Twitter has a love hate relationship for me and I barely opened the app unless actively chatting with a friend. So when I saw 700+ notifications, I was surprised. It had never happened before.

I began to scroll through, and when I saw what had happened, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

I had lost over half of my followers and a solid 60% of previous Twitter mutuals had blocked me. But worst of all, I had hundreds of hate tweets directed at me replying to the hackers tweets. Messages had been sent in DMs and accounts blocked, followed, and unfollowed as well.

If you have never felt that loss of agency-- that sickening feeling of words you never said next to your profile-- be glad. Because it is traumatic. I value my words. I value what I have to say. And having that taken from me was worse than anything I had been through here on Tumblr, outside of the suicide baiting (the most direct attack to me and my emotions/ insecurities throughout this entire ordeal). Further, this hacker had clearly stalked my tweets based on some of their comments. 

Hundreds of tweets bashing me, calling me aphobic slurs (knowing I am asexual mind you, as it was in my bio), making fun of my appearance and targeting all of the insecurities which lead to my first suicide attempt in high school, and taking/ editing images of my face and mocking them. This all culminated in a doxing threat-- a doxing threat which made me feel unsafe on a campus I had already been sexually assaulted on. I was once again, after starting the healing process, thrusted back into the darkest time of my life and spiraled into anxiety and depression. I cried a lot overwhelmed by it all, had difficulty sleeping, and felt sick. I started fall semester and couldn’t concentrate on school. I was a mess.

I had once again been condemned, this time for something I had no part in. I tried to example what happened but nobody listened. I had been hung without trial. People were understandably confused, and my entire reputation on the platform, and my page, became a mess of lies, misunderstandings, and more.

If you don’t know the feeling of already hating yourself and being insecure, and having these beliefs reinforced and spread by hundreds publicly across the internet? Of already feeling lonely and unwanted and having the one space you thought you had taken from you? Consider yourself lucky. 

I had a lot of voice actors and creators following me-- accounts I interacted and greatly cherished my mutual with. A handful of them unfollowed, understandably. This online hate mob was sending messages to people demanding they unfollow me, including some of these creators. They had no idea what to make of this mess or what was real and true and just didn’t want to deal with it. Most of the others just stopped interacting with me. @aaronwaltke (tagging so those who don’t follow already click and do so, because he is absolutely fantastic-- he’s a writer for ToA)  who had followed me on the platform, graciously wished me peace with the entire situation after I checked to make sure he had not been subjected to messages or hate, either from my hacker or other accounts. His was the greatest compassion I got on Twitter, before I ultimately ended up just having to delete.

I lost podcast deals because of this with Adrian Petriw, Aaron Ehasz, and Justin Richmond. I do not blame them one bit and would have done the same in the confusion not wanting to get dragged into anything. 

Only to have one of the friends I lost who helped start this interview these very people on their own podcasts. A slap in the face. A zine I had bought to support them came to my door, with the front page proclaiming to “spread a narrative of love.”

I was never granted that chance. That compassion. I had the vultures sent after me with no mercy. And anyone who has been through online abuse and systemic harassment knows just how much it feels like they’re slowly but surely picking at your flesh ( a metaphor I used in one of my old, since deleted posts discussing the situation, and still find accurate), wearing you down until you have no strength left.

Make no mistake, my story is not a one off situation. Many share the same tale of abuse and being driven off of platforms that once gave them great joy. These attacks are coordinated, systemic, and common hobby for these people-- who largely claim to be loving and accepting of all. They are a cyberbullying phenomenon which has risen with the presence of fandom on the internet. And I want to make clear, with current discussions of “cancel culture”, I mean nothing political in that statement. Some might call my experience cancel culture, but I don’t.

It’s just bullying. It’s just hate. These people get off on ruining people’s lives.

And my life was greatly set back and ruined. I had a stain on my past in fandom I could never be rid of. I had to shut down my podcast, took time off of all social media, and most of what I had built, most of my growth, was taken from me while those who incited and/ or spread hate thrived and continued to grow and find success. That was the greatest sting of all. 

I asked the one previous friend who hadn’t blocked me, but had just stopped interacting with me (which I understood and respected, and also greatly respected her perspective, help, and support though this situation in which she largely unfortunately ended up in the middle) for help after explaining everything, and got nothing. They didn’t seem to care, and just blocked me on all platforms. Once in awhile, I would find I was cut off from yet another old friend, or a blog that I had never interacted with before but clicked into, interested. It hurt being cut off, unable to fully interact with the fandom, but I could move on.

That pain would never go away, but I made clear I did not blame them for the actions of those who abused, harassed, and threatened me. I also made it clear they did not owe me anything, including unblocking. 

I just wanted to move on peacefully, but those with the power to enable that did not wish to help. I slowly, when I felt ready, began to be more active on Tumblr again, and once again the hate started up. 

Sometimes when I was hurting, I expressed my pain and loss to my followers just to reach out, because I was sad. I had no idea how to rebuild from all that had happened. This got me more hate an accusations of emotional manipulation and gaslighting. I had no idea what to do, and got trapped in a cycle of needing to talk about it, and getting hate and backlash, but not knowing where else I could turn. 

My doxer came back into my asks, ultimately making me switch schools, and refueled the drama. Speaking up about this got me more backlash-- mostly accounts reblogging (one with tags saying “fuck you”, despite not knowing the full story, and commenting and then blocking me so I could do nothing to respond or get it off of my page. I deleted all posts of the matter, as requested by these people (who validly pointed out they were in the main fandom tags, which I hadn’t thought of and understood), and hoped to move on.

But it hasn’t stopped. I have been beaten down and emotionally bruised for months. I have had my life and safety threatened, my education and by extension life path altered, and lost work (podcast) opportunities due to this-- alongside the irreversible emotional damage from trauma and abuse. My mental health issues and insecurities-- which I have been very open about to destigmatize the subjects and encourage conversation-- were actively targeted to inflict the most pain possible. 

And I can’t even talk about it, without enduring more hate and accusations of “playing the victim”.

Death threats, suicide baiting, doxing, months of bullying and harassment to the most vile degree, which a lot of these people don’t know about because they don’t even bother to read my words. Yet I’m playing the victim. 

And the accusations of bigotry and being hateful hurt, because it couldn’t be further from what is in my heart. I believing in love and acceptance of all. I don’t know how many are religious here, but I found God after my first suicide attempt and that is what his word has taught me. 

I’ve been through too much in life to tolerate this, for lack of a more eloquent term, bullshit. I know what abuse and victim blaming looks like when I see it. And in my 20 years of life, I have gone through too much: constant ridicule and bullying, suicide attempts, sexual assault, major spinal surgery, to just be stomped over and not stand up for my right to basis human decency. 

I refuse to put up with this, so unless I get an apology and some semblance of justice for everything I have been through, I am leaving. I will not participate in a space run by hate and toxicity. I will never claim to be perfect, and I have apologized for my mistakes and wrongdoings. Now, hold those who did this accountable. If you’re reading this you know very well who it was, and I am not naming them for those who don’t. Because at the end of the day I still send nothing but love and wish no ill will towards them.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t expect accountability of one of the greatest influencers in the fandom for their complacency in abuse, threats, suicide baiting, and and absolute ruining of my life and online experience. They enabled this and were well aware they had the power to stop it-- to ask their followers to stop-- and did nothing. They didn’t care-- about a human’s life and well being. 

@dragonprinceofficial, are you aware that this is what many of the fans of your show, which preaches love and an end to the cycle of vengeance, do to others? That this is happening in your space? If you stand at all by the values you preach, condemn it. @staffTumblr/ @supportTumblr-- shame on you for allowing this abuse to happen and ignoring my reports. Shame on you for permitting these people to operate in your platform and for being okay with hosting hate. People have been driven to suicide on your website-- I am one of the lucky ones. 

If you care at all about humanity and stand against this behavior, reblog and spread awareness. Share my story so I may not happen to anyone else. Tag @dragonprinceofficial until they notice and speak out. 

This is my story, and so many others. Make sure it doesn’t happen ever again. No human being deserves to be treated how I was. Everyone deserves compassion, decency, and respect. And everyone deserves a place in fandom. Do better. If you want to reach out to me DMs are open, as well as my email, which is attached to my account. Until this change happens and I am given the support/ help needed to safely function on this platform, this blog will not be active outside of that. 

Thank you all of the many accounts who have supported me, and I am working on getting back to all who have reached out! Your love means the world. You know who you are, and I don’t want to tag in case people come after you for showing me kindness. I am sorry if this is goodbye, to all that have enjoyed my blog. I enjoyed it for a long time  too. I loved sharing my passion for stories, culture, having a space where I could analyze and discuss my favorite things.  I loved getting to share what I had to offer with the world, having fun and posting jokes with my unique sense of humor. I loved interacting with intelligent people/ fellow fans and discussing my favorite stories, offering each other new insights and growing together. I loved the many, many kind and wonderful people who reached out to me in a variety of ways and provided support and friendship.

In the end, it just isn’t worth all of this pain and trauma, and I know when to put my foot down. I don’t want pity, I don’t want apologizes, and I’m not a martyr. I just want my story to make a difference-- to spur positive change in fandom culture/ spaces.  I will be tagging all fandoms in which I have seen this kind of abuse present as well, to reach as many as possible. 

Be safe, and be kind.

- The Arcadia Ledger/ Ryn/ Katie, signing off.

#fandom #tumblr #long post #the dragon prince #dragon prince #tdp #raayllum #kuno chan #the dragon prince fandom #tumblr support #tdp fandom #tumblr help #abuse #suicide mention #abuse mention #tw suicide #tw abuse #avatar: the last airbender #avatar the last airbender #a:tla #atla #avatar #tales of arcadia #toa #she ra #spop #she ra and the princesses of power #voltron #voltron legendary defender #the arcadia ledger

[himboarcher]

reasons i've seen folks say that grad critics hate grad:

they hate travis (in fairness, i’ve def seen some comments of people shitting on trav for the sake of shitting on trav, but it’s not super common and typically gets downvoted into oblivion on reddit.)

it's not balance / travis isn't griffin (???????)

they hate neurodivergent people (again, in fairness, i have seen a handful of comments that could come across this way! but most of the time when travis being ADHD or his NPD is brought up, it's by defenders saying that criticizing travis is ableist because he's neurodivergent or, in one particular comment, infantilizing him bc of it and literally comparing grad to putting a kid's artwork on the fridge. there were some comments early on that pointed to him being a narcissist as the reason for things people disliked about grad, but everyone seems to have realized that that's a shitty train of thought and left it behind.)

they're just toxic haters (again, there are a small handful of people like this because this is the internet, but the genuine criticism greatly outweighs their bullshit. i 100% think that the people, which is mostly just one dude who is also insufferable on reddit, who have been responding rudely to positive tweets under the episode announcements lately are out of line and need to stop. there's been an influx of that lately, presumably because people are frustrated that after over a year of grad going on, there's been no improvement to most of the major issues. that's still no excuse to be a dick to folks, though.)

vs some of the actual reasons i don't like grad:

the racism / racist tropes, and the way that they’ve straight up ignored this criticism and will likely never acknowledge it. pretty wild considering a core tenet of their brand is their willingness to acknowledge when they’ve messed up and do their best to course correct.

clumsy attempts at inclusion that are shallow and often end up being fairly offensive ("...ask me about my wheelchair," anyone?)

on a related note: i don't think that travis had bad intentions, but as an nonbinary person, it feels othering to me that travis only has enby characters give others their pronouns unprompted. i'm thinking specifically of kai here. having listened to their introduction, i don't think it's as bad or awkward as some people have said, but i can't remember travis ever having another NPC tell the PCs their pronouns, especially not a cis character. it's not a huge deal, but it's something that rubbed me the wrong way. admittedly, i don't think it would bother me so much if travis hadn't dropped the ball so much with performative inclusion in the past.

okay i'm putting the rest under a read more because even without getting into all of the problems i have with it, this got Long.

little to no player agency. player choices are ultimately meaningless and have little to no effect on the world. even when he seems to go along with a plan they come up with, it always ends with them having to go back to travis' pre-written script (see: subpoenaing the xorn, but not really because they had to go with travis' original plan of "send the xorn home through the rift".) the players repeatedly get told things about what they think or feel or what they've been doing to an unnecessary degree. fitzroy is the only one who really gets space to play and decide things for himself, and that's only because travis has decided he's the main character.

the NPCs are all too nice and willing to give the PCs anything they ask for and more, unless the PCs are trying to follow their own plan and then the NPCs are completely useless. but honestly, aside from gray, all of the NPCs are just.... nice. travis refuses to even let his antagonists be mean or cruel or even more than just slightly rude, because that'd be a bummer and we don't want that! the "twist" of gordy the lich king actually being polite and chill is not a twist at all because everyone is like that in this world. the NPCs are also wildly overpowered, but then suddenly absolutely useless when the PCs actually want their help.

too many cliffhangers that are dropped immediately at the beginning of the next episode. i feel bad for travis because so many of these cliffhangers actually set up good momentum and seemed like things were gonna get interesting, but almost every single time he just dropped them at the beginning of the next episode. like when althea showed up to interview the boys and the next episode started with travis being like "actually you went to sleep, she said she'll be back tomorrow!"

that time travis specifically said in his exposition dump that the thundermen left their horses behind because they thought the centaurs might be offended by them riding horses, only to later on rag on them for being surprised that the centaurs had horses they could ride.....

also the centaur arc in general, but i already listed racism above, so.

the way that the toxic positivity and parasocial tendencies in the mcelroy fandoms have made a large portion of the fandom take ANY criticism as a personal attack on travis and/or on themselves for enjoying something others consider bad, either morally or just quality-wise. it’s okay to admit that something you like has problematic elements or just isn’t as good as it once was. you can and should engage critically with the media you consume.

related to above: the way travis has handled genuine criticism, which is to throw public tantrums on his twitter or make weird passive aggressive tweets & ultimately ignore all the genuine criticism and advice he's been offered by claiming it's all subjective, even after he specifically asked for it and set up an email for folks to send in genuine, objective advice for him (after he threw a tantrum on twitter and replied to someone's criticism publicly, which resulted in his followers dogpiling on that person bc how dare they insult their internet best friend). while i was writing this last night, he actually announced that he’s taking a break from Twitter and acknowledged that he’s been using it as an echo chamber where he can easily get validation from folks, and honestly i’m happy for him that he’s recognized this problem and is stepping away for a while! i hope he’ll genuinely use this time to reflect on how he’s been behaving and find a more healthy way to use social media. i’m leaving this point in because i think his Twitter being such a positive echo chamber was encouraging him to do stuff like this, and him somewhat acknowledging his behavior doesn’t mean it can no longer be discussed.

rainer. extremely cool concept in theory and i was very into it until that awkward "does anyone want to ask about my wheelchair?" moment. also when travis had her use her mobility aid to RAM INTO A DOOR instead of just fucking knocking???? also all the times travis has tried to force a romantic relationship between her and fitzroy, despite fitzroy displaying no interest in her in that way. also, just to clarify: as an ace person, i don’t think this is aphobic! (and it’s kind of a stretch to call it that imo, especially since griffin never explicitly said that fitzroy's aromantic!) i just think it’s weird and awkward and a little uncomfortable for me personally, mostly because it reminds me of the times i’ve been in similar situations.

less of a problem than a lot of the other stuff and more just bad writing, but the forced emotional moments. in general, nothing in grad feels earned (why are the boys heading a war? when they have multiple actual heroes with combat experience on their side and a supposedly powerful secret organization? and the thundermen are like 21 years old max and have only had like ~10 fights in the entire campaign?) but there've been a couple times where travis has tried to force unearned emotional moments, presumably because he knows people enjoyed those with the last campaigns. but the difference is that in balance, the big emotional moments happened because they were earned. in grad, it's just travis throwing a baby pegasus at us for a few minutes and then the next time she shows up, it's supposed to be a tearful goodbye.

there are absolutely no stakes. remember when the thundermen got told that if they left, gray would kill 10 students? and then they left and came back and it turns out that what gray actually meant was, "i'll tie ten students who are mostly nameless NPCs to a tree and throw some dogs at them that you can easily stop in time, then throw a tantrum because how dare you but i'll leave before you can really do anything to hurt me lol" travis did have fitzroy's magic get taken away, but like. it didn't really do anything? also all he had to get it back was be coerced into using drugs by an authority figure and trip in the woods?

we're told that the school is weird and the hero system is corrupt, but the world of nua is still presented as more of a liberal utopia than anything? althea getting fired because of a corrupt villain is the only time we've somewhat seen corruption, but even then, she was still allowed to get (what seems to me, anyway, but admittedly i don't know for sure bc nothing about the HOG makes much sense) a fairly important job from the very people who stripped her of her hero license or whatever the fuck heroes need?

travis doesn't actually seem to understand how capitalism or bureaucracy works and just chalks up everything to "red tape." also more on the rest of the boys than him specifically, but the "let's destroy capitalism!" thing turning into just pushing some filing cabinets over................... okay.

and one last piece of extremely subjective criticism: it's just kind of.... boring. i think a lot of people, myself included, would be willing to overlook 90% of the problems with graduation if it didn't feel like such a slog to get through.

also people saying that we can't or shouldn't criticize graduation because it's "free" is absolutely absurd for several reasons. first, something being free does not make it above criticism. second, there ARE people who directly financially support the show with monthly donations. three, there's a difference between something being free and something being not for profit. podcasting is their full time job. they make their living off of money made from TAZ and MBMBAM (and probably their other shows to a lesser extent). this not a fun home game that they are graciously recording and sharing with us. it is a product they are producing that they make money off of, both from ads in the episodes and merch & books based off of these podcasts. they have marketed themselves as professionals, and both griffin and travis have been on panels where they are marketed as professional DMs and appear alongside other professional DMs (which makes it incredibly frustrating when people say that travis is just a newbie DM and we can't criticize him because of that. if he's a newbie, then he should not be taking part of panels as a professional DM where he speaks as an expert). TAZ is free in the same way that an episode of NCIS is free. i may not pay for it directly, but the creators are paid to create it and profit off of me consuming this product. so saying we should be grateful for any mcelnoise that the benevolent good boys share with us and that we're not allowed to criticize it "because it's free" is absolutely wild.

#negativity cw #i guess #anyway this is not meant to say that you cannot enjoy grad. #but i'm tired of folks on this website acting like there aren't genuine problems with it #and saying that people just dislike it bc they hate travis etc etc #taz graduation #i genuinely don't expect anyone to read this bc it's so long #but here ya go. #long post

[equalseleventhirds]

quick disclaimer before fic: this is not meant to excuse or absolve melanie and georgie of outing jon; what they did was wrong and they should not have done it. instead it is an... examination of a character who is Maybe working some things out but, due to Internalized Issues, is harshly rejecting it both for herself and other people. (i’m aware i wrote something with the exact same FUCKING premise back when i was in the sh*rl*ck fandom dear god don’t read that linked fic it is from a deeply shameful time of fandom i only linked it as proof i did the same thing before. almost like i’m still working through the same stuff via writing fanfiction. hm.) (further discussion on THAT in post-fic notes; i wanted to keep it under the cut for personal reasons.)

furthermore: warning for discussion of sex (but not explicit depictions of sex), characters experiencing aphobia both internalized and not, mention of sexism wrt jobs, characters outing other characters without their consent (more than once, and more than just jon), and mention of consensual but unwanted sex (as in, consent was given, but the consenter did not enjoy it, and consented due to expectations).

- - -

It starts with: “I don’t, I, I usually can’t—Lately. I mean. Lately I can’t.” Melanie shuts her eyes so she won’t have to see Georgie, her hand on the sheets, judgment questions in her eyes. “Since I got—shot. It’s more difficult, is all.”

“Melanie—”

“You can still try,” she says, the words falling too fast, too panicked. “If you want, sometimes other people—and it’s fine! I’m always, it’s fine to try. Sometimes I do. I just might not. You know.”

“You might not orgasm,” Georgie finishes for her. It’s hard to tell how she’s feeling about it—until her fingers brush Melanie’s chin, turning her face up.

Reluctantly, Melanie opens her eyes, and then she’s glad she did. Because Georgie’s smiling, not a mocking smile, gentle. And they said this was just, just casual, just between friends (there’s too much going on with ghosts and the Institute and Georgie’s ex sleeping on her couch when he isn’t being kidnapped for it to be more than that), but Melanie’s glad Georgie is smiling.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Georgie says. She’s sitting up now, not lying almost-not-quite between Melanie’s legs anymore. She looks gorgeous, naked and cross-legged on that horrible mattress with a microfiber sheet wrapped around her shoulders, and Melanie wants to curl up in the sheet with her and eat the leftover pizza from earlier and fall asleep together with grease on their hands.

No. Focus. “It’s okay,” Georgie says again, gentler. “If you can’t right now. If you don’t want to. You certainly gave me a lovely orgasm—”

“—or three—”

“—yes, thank you, and if you’d rather just call it there, I’m not pushing it. As long as you enjoyed yourself.” She frowns, suddenly, glancing down at Melanie’s hands. “You… did enjoy yourself? I hope we didn’t—”

“I did!” She always does, when it’s other people coming, when she gets to be touching warm skin and watching someone fall apart. It’s… nice. “It’s just, you know. I got shot.”

(And isn’t that a convenient excuse, she sneers in her own head, and it sounds like Toni refusing to come back to the team, it sounds like the most sarcastic videos about her breakdown, it sounds like Elias. Isn’t it convenient that now you can blame your little problem on blood flow, or nerve endings, or stress. Never mind that you didn’t have those excuses a year ago. Or two years. Or back when you had a real girlfriend, and you always said yes but she got tired before—)

Georgie tucks a strand of hair behind Melanie’s ear. “Okay, good. If we, you know, try this again sometime? If you’re feeling better? Then I can try.” She stops, licks her lips, watches Melanie’s expression. “Or I can… not try, if you’d still prefer that. Later. You know. If.”

“I’m not—” And she’s rushing again, always rushing, she doesn’t even know if she and Georgie will ever—

“No, I know! It’s fine! But like—Look, this isn’t exactly new for me, you know? If that’s something you want. Something you don’t want. Or I, I’m saying it’s not a problem, if you do or don’t want me to make you come in the future, or even if you don’t want to have sex at all, I mean, when we were dating Jon didn’t—”

That’s where Georgie stops, as if talking about Jon is too much, as if she hasn’t been speaking Melanie’s secret insecurities out loud in bed like it’s something they can talk about, as if all of this hasn’t already been too much and too terrifying already.

Melanie stands up, grabs the comforter as a makeshift cloak (because Georgie has the sheet, and suddenly she isn’t sure she wants to share the sheet with her). “Right.”

“I’m just—I have a friend. Who you might talk to, if you wanted to talk about this.”

She steps away from the bed, towards the door. “Sure. Pizza? I’m hungry.”

-

The problem is, Melanie doesn’t much like Jon. He was such a dick about the Youtube thing, and about her statement, and about Sasha. And even though she knows (sort of) that part of it hadn’t been his fault, she still isn’t going to talk over her disinterest in sex with him. It’s mortifying. Even if he wasn’t her boss. And Georgie’s ex. And currently out of the Archives, anyway.

But she wants to talk to somebody, about Georgie’s words running around and around and around her head, about the sheer panic mixing with almost-relief and then the visceral no no no churning low in her stomach that had made it a struggle just to choke down her pizza. She wants to ask someone is this normal, am I allowed, is it even enough to be halfway to ‘not at all’ or should I just suck it up. She wants to talk that out desperately.

It’s just… she doesn’t have many friends left, after her whole fall from Youtube ghost hunter grace. She’s not going to ask Georgie about it, any more than Jon, although for pretty much the opposite reason. Who’s left? Her shiny new coworkers? Tim, who seethes and hates everything and everyone in the Archives? Martin, who’s still upset that Jon so much as spoke to her while he was on the run? Basira?

-

When Melanie met Sasha—the real Sasha, the one apparently no one but her even remembers—she’d been the only woman in the Archives. And Melanie had chatted with her about haunted pubs, and maximizing SEO, and how to talk to people who’d seen a white dog while they were drunk and thought it was a ghost. And about their jobs, of course, which led to both of them scoffing about the sexist bullshit of academia and how someone like Sasha could be just an assistant and the only woman on her team.

And then Elias hired Melanie to replace… the thing that replaced Sasha. Hired another woman to replace the only woman. You learn to see patterns from the kind of person who might say diversity the same way as toilet plunger: something necessary, but distasteful. Melanie was filling a role he needed filled, and she could live with that.

And then Basira.

Who wasn’t there because she wanted to be, of course, but was still there. Was still another woman in the boy’s club of terror they’d apparently signed on for. Could maybe, maybe, be someone Melanie could connect with. Someone she could talk to.

Maybe.

-

“Do you know if he and Jon ever…?”

“No clue, and not interested!” She’s laughing, about to just dismiss it out of hand, but… maybe. She can feel the questions she never asked Georgie, the words sharpening their claws on the edges of her mind. The no, not me, not allowed sinking in her gut.

“Although…” Make it light. Make it interesting. Make it about someone else. How to hook an audience without having a public breakdown and becoming a— “According to Georgie, Jon… doesn’t.”

It feels wrong as soon as she says it. Like she’s dirty. Like she’s lying. Like a thousand eyes are looking at her, watching her, waiting for more. Make it a story. Engage your audience. Like it’s 2013 in a convention hotel room and Pete just told everyone Don’t worry, Mel likes girls actually, and even though they were all fine about it that moment of sharpshock terror in her throat as they all looked—

“Like, at all?”

The one thing she never learned was how to stop talking. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, that does explain some stuff.”

And that’s… it, really. That does explain some stuff. Jon is a dick, has always been a dick, overfocused on work and not on other people, and that does explain some stuff. Right. Yes. Like her last girlfriend had told her, about all you do is work, I can’t even get you off. An explanation, just like she always knew it would be.

It doesn’t really matter. She has a boss to go kill.

-

“I think,” she says, slow, like every word is being dragged out of her, “that I might not like. Sex. As much as, you know, people do.”

“You’re a person,” her therapist says, firm, and she has to bite back a sarcastic laugh.

“Right. ‘Course.”

- - -

post-fic notes: i myself personally have previously identified as: heteroromantic gray-ace, heteroromantic ace, aroace, aro gray-ace, aro bi, bi, arospec bi, aro bi again, and aro bi but sex ambivalent. part of that has been natural progression and change; part of that was bcos some people i considered friends got very into aphobic discourse, and i internalized a lot of what they said. in recent months i have been examining my sex ambivalence (sometimes repulsion) and considering what that means about whether or not i am on the ace spectrum. i’m still thinking about these things. i’m still, deep down inside, afraid of the aphobic people i respected and cared about hearing about this.

in part i wrote this to work through some of My Own Shit regarding this. in part i wrote this bcos i will get my grubby little aspec hands (bcos regardless of anything else, i am aspec, whether that’s ace or aro) on every character i can. yes, even the ones who did an objectively shitty thing to jon, the one canonical ace character. bcos sometimes people (like me) internalize things and make mistakes.

#absolutely not beta'd or britpicked or even edited much #i needed to get this out and now it's late but i'm WORKING THROUGH SOME STUFF #uhhhh ambiguous ending about melanie's like! decisions! identity! feelings! #ambiguous if she or georgie EVER talk to JON #nothing is resolved! nothing is fucking good and light and happy! it's all MESSY #it's also so long i'm so sorry but melanie spent a lot of time looking at georgie and then a lot in emotional turmoil so like #what can ya do. #anyway. fuck it. posting a thing. #fanfiction #algie writes things #the magnus archives #hopefully i have rambled long enough this doesn't get maintagged sry if it does ignore me i needed this for ME #and i guess like. i do want other ppl to read it. but i do not want to maintag it. u kno how it is. #NOW WITH EDITING

[entity9silvergen]

Thought That Cupid Shot Me With Love But It Was Only An Aro (Naruto Fanfiction)

Summary: Soulmates were supposed to be the other half of your soul. Your one true love. Ino always dreamed of finding her soulmate. Sai never wanted one. Still, they cared for each other so they were going to make it work. Somehow.

Relationships: Sai & Ino, Sai/ Ino, Sai & Team Kakashi, Sai & Team Asuma, Sai & Shin, Referenced Naruto/ Hinata, Referenced Sasuke/ Sakura, Referenced Kakashi/ Guy, Referenced Shikamaru/ Temari, Referenced Choji/ Karui

Characters: Sai, Ino Yamanaka, Shikamaru Nara, Choji Akimichi, Shin, Kakashi

Warnings: Minor aphobia

Other: AroWriMo 2021, Soulmate AU, Aroace Sai, Aro/ Allo Relationship, Oneshot, Aromantic Writer, Queer Themes, QPRs

Word Count: 10K

Author’s Note: This story was written for Aromantic Writing Month 2021! I’ve been wanting to write an aromantic Soulmate AU for awhile and decided to finally write it when I realized Aro Writing Month was approaching. Prompt for week 1 was Romo/ Loveless & Future which kind of aligns with this fic. 

The title comes from the song Not In Love by Natalia Kills.

This is my first time writing a soulmate AU and also my first time writing an aromantic character. I’d just like to say I don’t really like the idea of aromantic/ alloromantic soulmates because it implies they both have to compromise in some way but I’ve always wanted to see how that kind of relationship would be navigated so here we are. 

Some characters are mildly aphobic but there’s nothing hateful or extreme. It’s mostly just people not understanding.

Also this fic skips around through time a bit and begins before Sai gets his name in canon but I am just going to call him Sai because it’s kind of awkward to avoid using it. A few minor deviations from canon are taken just for convenience. 

___________

As long as Ino could remember, she’d had a massive, stark white tiger with jet black stripes wrapped around her arm.

She didn’t really question it’s presence. Everyone had marks on their bodies as far as she knew. Once she was old enough to really recognize what it was, however, she did find it a bit odd. Compared to the bright red bush clover on her mother’s upper arm and the aquamarine instrument on her father’s leg, a black and white tiger seemed strange. She tried asking about it but no one seemed to understand her confusion. They just saw it was any other soulmark with nothing out of the ordinary.

It wasn’t until she was a couple years into her training at the Academy that she really understood what the tiger on her skin meant.

She’d been sitting on the grassy hill where her Kunoichi classes were held with her friend Sakura. It was early spring and tiny flowers were beginning to sprout out of the ground. Idly, Ino plucked them out of the earth and slowly began tying their stems into a chain. What for, she did not know. She just needed something to occupy herself until the teacher arrived. She was running a bit late and once she arrived, Ino understood why.

“Hello class!” the teacher called once she reached the top of the hill, dropping a bag of books at her feet. They hit the grass with a loud thump. The bag was a lot heavier than it looked, no wonder it had slowed her down. “Sorry for the delay!”

“What are those books for?” Sakura called out, voicing the rest of the girl’s thoughts.

“Oh these?” the teacher said, picking up one of the books. “We’re going to use these books to help with the lesson. Today we’re going to talk about soulmarks.”

Soulmark. The word struck a chord in Ino’s mind. It sounded familiar yet she didn’t have the slightest idea what it meant. She sensed it was important though. Intrigued, she rested her arms on her knees and leaned forward a bit. She didn’t say anything, positive Sakura and all her newly discovered chattiness would do it for her. “What’s a soulmark?”

The teacher’s eyes glowed in a way Ino had never seen before as she sat down and threw herself into her explanation. “You see those designs on your bodies?”

Ino looked down at the tiger on her arm and felt a flash of excitement. Was she finally going to learn the meaning behind it?

“Those are soulmarks. You see, the universe is very wise and knows who we are destined to fall in love with,” the teacher told them, smiling at the wondrous expressions appearing on the girls’ faces. Ino tried to wipe the look off her own features but she couldn’t help it. This was nothing like flower arranging at all. That was fun but this was important. “That’s why we’re born with these marks. They give us hints about what our soulmates are like and tell us how to find them.”

A few girls squealed and made soft noises expressing their delight but Ino remained quiet, eyes wide as she ran her fingertips over the tiger’s curved stripes. She’d done so countless times before but now it felt different. Almost humbling. This mark told her who she was meant to fall in love with? That was amazing. Almost unbelievable. 

“I read a story book about soulmates once,” declared a girl Ino couldn’t remember the name of. “It said soulmates are each other’s one true love and we’re all meant to find each other some day. Some people have to travel really far to find their soulmate!”

“That’s true,” the teacher said with a nod, “but usually our soulmates aren’t too far away. I knew my soulmate since we were kids but we didn’t realize until we were much older. Sometimes we need time to develop as people before our soulmarks make sense. We need time to grow into them.”

“I heard that Hyuga girl has a ramen bowl on her somewhere,” another girl spoke up. She made an over exaggerated face of disgust. “The only person who eats ramen enough for the universe is that dumb Uzumaki kid. I’d bet anything they’re soulmates.”

“Now, Yaka,” the teacher chided, “it’s not nice to make assumptions about other people’s soulmates, let alone talk about their soulmarks behind their backs. Soulmarks are a private thing.”

Ino noticed the teacher didn’t scold Yaka for the way she was talking about Naruto and Hinata. She didn’t know what that was about but she didn’t really like it. She didn’t have the faintest idea who her soulmate was but she hoped no one made fun of him for her soulmark, whatever it was. As troubling as her mark was, she loved it and knew she would one day love her soulmate as much as the tiger on her arm. And he was supposed to love her just as much, right? They were destined to be together after all. Each other’s true love.

“I hope mine is Sasuke,” Sakura sighed dreamily, clutching her hands together.

Ino snapped out of her romantic daydreams and blew air out through her mouth, making her blond bangs move out of her face, as she rolled her eyes. “We’re too young to really know, Sakura. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Color is the best indicator to go off of,” the teacher told them, eyes drifting to the mark on Sakura’s hand. “Red isn’t an uncommon color in the soulmarks of the Uchiha.”

Ino’s mouth twisted in annoyance. Their teacher was indulging her? Really? At least Sakura seemed happy about it. And Ino would be lying if she said she didn’t think Sakura’s mark may one day fit their classmate. The scarlet feather of a hawk covered the back of her hand, the middle bleeding into a pale purple that stretched the shaft into a long snake trailing up her arm. It was a pretty cool soulmark, Ino had to admit. Two animals in one mark? And so colorful. Maybe that meant Sakura’s soulmate had a lot of character to him. Or that he really liked animals. Did Sasuke like animals? But like the others, it made her uneasy about her own.

“What if your soulmark doesn’t have any colors?” Ino asked, raising her hand. When the teacher’s eyes flickered to her arm, Ino put her arm down and covered her mark with her hand. She tried her best not to look down in shame to no avail then immediately hated herself for it. Then she decided she hated her teacher for the look she was giving her. How dare she make Ino feel ashamed of her soulmark and, by extension, her soulmate? 

The teacher’s judgemental look vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a cheery facade, and she handed Ino the book she was holding. “That’s a good question! Everyone, take a book and try to find any characteristics that might match your soulmark. You might be able to learn something about your soulmate!”

Ino wasn’t oblivious to the fact her question was ignored but Sakura was tugging at the book in her hands, excited to see what it’s contents could tell her. Ino shook her negativity away and laughed, scolding her friend into settling down and sharing the book.

They spent the whole afternoon flipping through the pages, gazing at the beautiful soulmarks within, and Ino found nothing about colorless soulmarks. Like many things regarding her soulmate, she didn’t know what to think of that.

___________

Sai thought he was markless until he was eight.

He knew what soulmarks were, of course. They were impossible to miss, especially since he lived in such close quarters with everyone he trained with. He’d just never seen one on his own body so he just figured he didn’t have one. And he was pretty okay with that. 

This batch of ROOT recruits were being trained in a Hidden Mist style so they spent a fair amount of time on the water. The instructor had begun teaching the Water Natured recruits how to use Water Style: Liquid Bullets recently so today that part of the group was polishing their jutsu while the rest of the recruits practiced dodging on a moving surface of water. It was a good exercise for everyone.

The only problem was all the Water Style users kept nailing Sai with their jutsu.

Normally Sai wouldn’t mind. He was a fast ninja and he was pretty good at dodging. The only problem was that there were so many and a few were bound to hit now and again. It was just that it was more than a few. And he seemed to be the only one getting hit. It was enough that the instructor asked him to get off the water and practice his Earth Style on his own until they were done.

“Maybe we can ask the instructor if you can wear a shirt next time,” Shin said casually once the session was over and the group was heading back to base. “I mean, it’ll get all wet if you fall in but it’s better than getting hit with Liquid Bullets the whole time.”

“What?” Sai peered at his brother, confused. “Why would wearing a shirt change anything?”

“Um, because of your soulmark?”

“I have a soulmark?”

Shin’s hands dropped from their place folded behind his head as he came to a stop to gape at his brother. “You didn’t know you have a soulmark?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Yes!” Shin exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “Soulmarks are important! They tell you who you’re going to fall in love with and- wait. If you didn’t know you had a soulmark, why did you think everyone kept shooting you with their jutsu?”

“I thought maybe it was some kind of strategy to pick off a weak link.”

“You’re not a weak link!” Shin exclaimed, louder this time. Sai didn’t really understand what he was getting upset over but he hoped he’d get over it soon. The instructors didn’t really like it when the students got worked up like this. “Your soulmark just makes a giant target on your back. It’s easy to aim for so everyone goes for it.”

“Oh.” That made sense, he supposed. “What is it? My soulmark, I mean.”

“It’s a flower. I don’t know what kind.”

“What does it mean to have a flower soulmark?”

Shin shrugged. “I have no idea. I think I heard flowers are kind of rare since all girls like flowers. Hey, maybe that means your soulmate is a boy. The universe might think boys liking flowers is weird enough to make it soulmark-worthy.”

“I don’t think it’s weird for boys to like flowers.”

“So you think your soulmate is a boy?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really care.”

“Come on,” Shin whined. “You’ve got to care a little bit!”

“Not really. I’ve never wanted a soulmate.”

“Really?” Shin sounded surprised, far more surprised than Sai thought he would. “Well, maybe that’s just because you didn’t think you had one. Maybe now it’ll change.”

Sai didn’t think so but he didn’t tell Shin. He didn’t think he’d understand.

________

Ino was nine when she felt a blinding pain shooting up from her soulmark.

It wasn’t sudden. In fact, it was very slow. A gentle static that turned into overwhelming agony. Ino had felt emotions through the soulbond before, however rare, but never to this degree. The initial surprise was faint, easily mistakable for her own feelings, but the adrenaline and fear that followed most certainly were not.

Iruka seemed to notice something was wrong because by the time the first wave of crippling despair hit, he’d already yelled for a student to take charge of the class and had ushered her out into the hallway. She was dimly aware of what was happening around her through it all. If she’d been more clear headed, she would’ve worried more about keeping it together in the presence of her classmates but right now she could only think about the hurt, fear, and grief rippling through her. 

Her soulmark burned, sending bolts of emotion up her body, welling her throat shut and tightening her chest with raw, unfiltered emotion. It was like water boiling up in a kettle that exploded into a scalding ocean instead of steam. Like someone had injected lightning into her body and let it fry her heart. Like being surrounded by a heavy cloud of darkness that sucked any light out of her. 

Never before had she felt such a thing and she didn’t know how to handle it. She didn’t understand where it was coming from or why this was happening to her. But then it just… stopped. Like nothing had happened.

She regained control of her breath as the sharp grip around her receded. She felt the sobs die in her throat and clean oxygen fill her lungs once again. She hadn’t even noticed she’d been crying until now. Tears stained her face and Iruka’s shoulder but there were fewer than before. It was now that she realized she had collapsed on the ground in the hallway, body pressed against the rough wood floor. The realization didn’t make her want to get up any more though. She could lie here for the rest of her life for all she cared. She kind of wanted to. Lying here in this sleepy, numb fog that clouded her mind sounded like a good idea.

“Are you alright?” Iruka asked, her sensei’s worried tone drawing her back to reality.

“What happened?” Ino groaned, sitting up to meet his gaze. The concern was evident on his face but he looked relieved to see that she was okay. She felt a prickle of guilt knowing she was responsible for his worry. What was that anyway? It just came out of nowhere then left just as fast. Absently, her hand drifted to her soulmark. Any echo of its earlier noise was long gone. It was as silent as the dead of night. “I feel…”

“I think something happened to your soulmate,” Iruka told her softly, helping her sit up against the wall. He shifted a bit so he sat across from her. For that, Ino was grateful. She didn’t think she could handle getting up right now.

“My soulmate?”

“You’ve felt things through your soulbond before, right?” Iruka asked. Ino nodded as she wiped her face free of any stray tears. “Well, sometimes when our soulmates are in a lot of pain or distress, we can feel it through the soulbond.”

“How come?” Ino asked, genuinely curious. The pain she felt was probably nothing compared to what he was feeling so she could stomach a bit of it for her soulmate’s sake but she didn’t understand why the universe would place that upon her or anyone else. That just seemed cruel.

“Well…” Iruka trailed off for a moment, hesitating, before the words came to him. “Soulmates are a big part of our lives. They’re the other half of our soul. Our bond doesn’t begin when we meet. We usually love our partners a long time before we meet them.”

Ino nodded, following along so far. Sure, she didn’t know a thing about her soulmate, save what her soulmark told her, but he had a special place in her heart that only grew with each spark she felt through the bond. He was one of the most important things to her in the whole world. It felt kind of strange to call it love but any other word felt short of capturing what she felt. He was essentially a stranger yet, at the same time, he was the furthest thing from it.

“Soulmates support each other throughout their whole lives,” Iruka explained. “When our soulmates feel pain, we can comfort them through our soulbonds.”

“How?” Ino asked, leaning forward a bit. She desperately wanted to. The hopelessness and agony that had rooted itself in her chest had faded but if her soulmate was still feeling anything close to it…

“Just think about how much you love them,” Iruka told her with a lopsided smile, “and how much you want to be there for him. Try to focus those feelings through your soulbond.”

Ino nodded and tried her hardest to do as her sensei instructed her. But how could she express feelings for someone she’d never met? She could imagine her soulmate and the future they’d have together but that wasn’t real. It was all in her head and all she had to go off of inspiration-wise were stories and dreams. She was still young enough to indulge in the occasional fantasy or day dream but she was also a ninja. Ninja were realists and realistically, she knew nothing about what he was like and she didn’t have a real reason to love him the way she did.

But that didn’t mean the love she had wasn’t real. It was ingrained deep into her being, as deep as the bond tying her to her partner. It was a love that made warmth hum in her chest and the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile at the mere thought of it. Love so powerful she couldn’t put it into words. She just didn’t have the vocabulary and she didn’t think the right words even existed.

It didn’t make sense but it was real. The universe, spirits, god, sages, whatever was up there- It had made a decision and it was a good one. There was no reason to believe it but Ino knew it like a universal truth. He was destined for her and she was more than happy to be destined for him. Ino loved her other half however little sense it made. She’d always wanted him to know that and maybe now she could tell him through the soulbond if she tried hard enough.

She didn’t know what he was feeling. She didn’t know what he could possibly be experiencing that would make him feel this way. She just hoped that maybe she could help, even if it was just a little bit.

“How will I know if he can feel it?” Ino asked after a while. She felt a lot better. Her breath had regulated, the dampness in her eyes had dried, and her body felt a lot less heavy than it had when she sat down.

“There’s not really any way to tell immediately,” Iruka told her, getting to his knees before standing up. He offered Ino a hand to pull her up. She accepted it and began following him back to the classroom. “Your soulmate is probably going through a lot right now and he might not know how to respond or feel ready to. But, I’ve heard that soulmates sometimes send their thanks a few weeks after something big happens and feelings start passing through the bond a bit more easily. I’m sure he’ll be sending you some happiness in no time.”

Iruka’s words were a comfort and Ino momentarily forgot her worries and skipped back to class. But weeks later when Iruka asked her if she and her soulmate were doing better, Ino couldn’t answer. There wasn’t a hint of emotion coming through the bond anymore.

_________

It was over seven years since Shin died before Sai was shirtless around anyone again.

It wasn’t really something he’d thought about. Who thought about that kind of thing? He had plenty of other things to think about. His missions, crossing faces out of his bingo books, his art… Being shirtless was such an insignificant thing in his life that he never spared it a second thought. His training had ended with his brother’s death and there wasn’t really a need for him to change clothes or go swimming with someone. And without Shin or anyone else looking at his back, he’d almost forgotten his soulmark. There were a few flashes of feeling through the bond now and again but Sai was usually too dull to notice and he usually dismissed them without question. The existence of his soulmark didn’t affect his life in the slightest.

Imagine his confusion when Naruto wouldn’t stop staring at him after Captain Yamato dumped the two of them in a hot spring together. 

“Why do you keep looking at me, dickless?” Sai asked, smiling at how Naruto’s face soured at the nickname. He’d done well choosing it. “I was under the impression you were tired of being around me.”

“I am!” Naruto snapped indignantly. He crossed his arms and was silent for a moment. When Sai didn’t say anything, he caved and explained himself. “I… I was looking for your soulmark. Do you have one?”

Sai paused for a moment before nodding. “I do.”

Naruto’s gaze softened a bit and the hostility drained off his face. “It’s on your back, isn’t it? I didn’t see anything before you got in the water.”

“Why do you care?”

“I didn’t really think about it until you came in here and I didn’t see anything on you so I thought you might be markless. It’s… I dunno, it’s harder to stay mad at you knowing you’ve got a soulmate.”

“Why?

Naruto shrugged casually. “Knowing you love someone just makes you feel more human.”

If Sai were an expressive man, he would’ve made a face. One of anger or horror, he didn’t know. Angry Sai would’ve splashed Naruto in the face with a handful of water. Horrified Sai would’ve come up with a bad excuse and hurried out of the hot spring. But Sai wasn’t an expressive man so instead, he shut his mouth and sank into the water, trying not to think about the implication of his new teammate’s words. ___________

Ino met Sai at The Barbeque Place.

The Barbeque Place wasn’t actually called The Barbeque Place. They just called it that enough that it deserved to be called The Barbeque Place with the capitalization of the title and everything. It was actually called Yakiniku Q but no one cared. Team Asuma would convince everyone it was called The Barbeque Place until the owner changed the sign or they’d die trying.

Going to The Barbeque Place was the only way to properly celebrate anything Team Asuma style. Ino, Choji, and Shikamaru had only seen Naruto a couple of times since he returned to the village so when they saw him coming back from a mission, they knew they had to grab him then or they’d never get the chance to drag him to the restaurant and welcome their friend home.

The fact they had a new teammate with them was an added bonus.

Sai seemed nice. Kind of strange though. Ino didn’t know if it was just odd having someone new on Team 7 after so long or if it was just Sai’s general personality. She supposed she liked him but if it was anyone less good looking, Ino would definitely be upset Sasuke was getting replaced.

“So you’re ANBU, right?” Shikamaru asked the newcomer when the uncooked food had arrived and the early stages of conversation were over.

“How could you tell?”

“The uniform was a bit of a giveaway.”

“Noted.”

“ANBU?” Choji echoed, looking intrigued. His brief pause was long enough for Ino to take the opportunity to swipe a couple pieces of meat off the grill and shovel them onto Sai’s plate. Apparently pausing did not mean he was distracted though. “Ino!”

“Be nice! You don’t want to scare him off with your gross manners this early, do you?”

“I guess not…” Choji mumbled sullenly. His demeanor changed again in a heartbeat when a piece of perfectly cooked meat caught his eye. He plucked it up with his chopsticks and plopped it into his mouth, chewing the slices of beef happily, anger forgotten. 

Shikamaru, always the sharp one, picked up where Choji left off before his distraction. “So what’s that like? ANBU, I mean.”

Sai smiled passively. “I don’t think it’s too different from what shinobi teams do, just more isolated and the training is more rigorous.” 

“Really?” Sakura said, half distracted by trying to nab a piece of meat before Choji got his chopsticks on it. “I don’t know a lot about ANBU, even working so close with Lady Tsunade, but I’ve heard some bad rumors over the years.”

“Eh? Really? But Kakashi-sensei always seems happy wherever he talks about it,” Naruto replied. He swiped a piece of meat off Sai’s plate and popped it into his mouth before anyone could say anything. Ino would’ve scolded him but Sai didn’t seem to care. In fact, he seemed amused. It was hard believing someone as soft-spoken and gentle as Sai was a member of ANBU.

“Kakashi-sensei is Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura responded, brushing him off. “He doesn’t tell us anything and you never know if he’s actually happy or if he just hit a juicy part of those pervy books he’s always reading.”

“Eh, good point,” Naruto conceded through a full mouth, “but now we have Sai here to tell us stuff! I bet he’s a lot easier to talk to than Kakashi-sensei.”

Sai’s face remained passive but Choji and even Shikamaru seemed interested. Noticing, Sai sighed and gave in. “What do you want to know?”

“So you said ANBU was really lonely, right?” Shikamaru said, casually taking a piece of meat. Unsurprisingly, Choji let him and didn’t protest. “What about soulmates?”

“What about them?”

“I’ve heard they don’t let people search for their soulmates,” Sakura spoke up as she put a few vegetables on the grill. “They just have to live knowing their soulmate is out there wondering where they are and why they haven’t found them yet.”

“Well I heard they don’t let ANBU have soulmates at all,” Choji said, trying to wave Sakura’s chopsticks away from the grill. “Like they burn them off or make them stay covered all the time and that kind of thing.”

“I can confirm that isn’t true,” Sai said with a smile, sounding humored. “A lot of people have soulmates. Some of the best two-man teams and small units are made of soulmates, actually. We’re just not allowed to search outside of ANBU. My instructors always said it compromises our security.”

“That’s too bad,” Naruto commented and poked Sakura’s hand with his chopsticks. She yelped and pulled her hand away, allowing Choji to successfully steer the vegetables away from the grill and put down another couple pieces of beef. “But now that you’re out of ANBU, you can look for your soulmate, right?”

Sai said nothing and shrugged half-heartedly. 

“You do want to find your soulmate, right?” Ino asked, putting down her chopsticks to look at him instead of swooping in to aid Sakura. Choji really had to eat his greens. Naruto too but it wasn’t every day her friends got a new teammate. Right now he was a bit more interesting than a poking war.

This time, Sai had a clear answer to the question. “Not particularly.” 

“How?!” Ino’s plate clattered on the table slightly. She put a hand on it to stop it from falling but she could feel herself getting even more worked up. She sensed her friends giving her confused looks at her outburst. She tried her best to ignore them. “Your soulmate- Your soulmate is the other half of your soul! Without them, you’re incomplete. How could you not want to find them?”

Again, Sai shrugged.

“I’ve just never been interested in having a romantic relationship. Or any kind of relationship,” Sai said neutrally. He smiled and this time it was kind of infuriating instead of cute. “If it happens, it happens but I don’t particularly want to seek it out.”

“Isn’t it your destiny though?” Ino pressed. “To find your true love?”

“I thought you’d given up on that stuff,” Choji commented idly as he placed some new pieces of meat on the grill, “since you haven’t felt anything through your soulbond in years.”

Something inside Ino snapped. “Well, you’re just as far behind as me, fatso!”

In hindsight, that probably wasn’t the best move but getting the restaurant destroyed by Choji’s Human Boulder was worth it to escape that conversation. _________

It was well after the war had ended by the time the village’s Intelligence Division summoned Sai to lock up the members of the Seven Swordsmen that he’d sealed. 

The village was recovering well but the months after the end of the war had been chaotic. There were far too many things more important to worry about than who’d sealed their enemies and where their bodies were so Fuguki Suikazan and Jinin Akebino’s scrolls just ended up sitting in Sai’s apartment. It was only when someone from the Third Division was retelling the war story that everyone remembered they hadn’t given the sealed bodies to the Intelligence Division. Sai hadn’t really thought it was important but apparently it was important enough for the Hokage to send Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji running to his apartment in the middle of the day to retrieve them.

“I can’t believe you had these things just lying around for a whole year. What a drag…” Shikamaru complained as the shinobi carried the two scrolls through the front doors of the Analysis Division’s building. Between the four of them, it was a bit awkward but they were managing. Sai was surprised he and Lee had been able to carry these things around on the battlefield. Right now, they seemed so heavy. “I wish I’d known Intel involved so much running around before I joined…”

“Aw, you like it,” Choji said cheerfully. It went unsaid that Ino and Shikamaru were working in the Intelligence Division because there was no one else to fill their fathers’ shoes but Sai heard it in his voice. “And all this running around gives us the chance to see our friends more often!”

“You don’t even work here. You can see our friends whenever you want!” Ino groaned as they began heading into the underground storage unit. “Slow down guys, I don’t really want to fall down the stairs in front of all these Jonin. But he’s right, Sai. It’s nice seeing you. It feels like it’s been forever.”

Sai hummed in agreement and tried his best to convey the joy he got from seeing his friends again. After seeing Shin again and mastering the Crouched Tiger Bullet, it came a lot easier to him but years of underusing his facial expressions made it less than natural. “Indeed. Where are we putting these?”

Everyone looked to Shikamaru. The boy didn’t seem fazed. “These guys are dead, right? We should transfer them to body scrolls. Easier for the Analysis Team to… analyze them or whatever whenever they decide to. You know how to use that kind of sealing, right Sai?”

Sai nodded as they reached the bottom of the stairwell. “I do.”

“Great,” Shikamaru grunted as the group reached the bottom of the stairs and dropped the heavy scrolls on the concrete floor. “Ugh, do they really need to be this big?”

“It’s a difficult sealing jutsu. It requires a lot of ink.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s start unrolling this thing. Sai, there are some body scrolls over by the storage unit. Go grab whatever one you think will work best.”

Sai nodded and did as he was told, drifting off to the edges of the basement in search of the right tools. He wasn’t terribly experienced in any kind of sealing jutsu other than his own and he took his time finding a compatible scroll but after a couple minutes, he realized Team Asuma’s usual bickering had died down and the three had fallen into an unusual silence. Concerned, he stuck his head out of the storage area to check on them. “Are you alright?”

“Sai… Come here please,” Ino said in an unusual tone. Sai frowned. Her pale green eyes were fixed on something on the ground. Was something wrong with his seal? Had one of the Swordsmen somehow escaped? They were dead so it wouldn’t be the end of the world but it would be kind of a hassle to track down the body.

He stepped into the entry area and saw nothing out of the ordinary. One of the scrolls, Fuguki’s scroll, was unraveled, exposing the seal work and the swordsman's trapped form. Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji were just… staring at it? Sai couldn’t fathom why. Maybe they thought this method of sealing was immoral? It really wasn’t different from any other kind of sealing. Was the sight of the body on the page unsettling them?

“Sai, what is this?” Choji said in an uncharacteristically empty voice. 

Sai took a few steps to join them beside the scroll. He peered at it, trying to see anything that was out of place or didn’t belong. Fuguki was still there, held in by his sealing tiger’s sharp claws. Was his sword in there? No, no it wasn’t. They’d returned the Seven Swords to the Hidden Cloud a while ago. He remembered because that was when Choji had realized he and that girl Karui were soulmates. It’d been a whole thing. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

Ino held up her marked arm and Sai suddenly realized what was happening here.

“...Oh.”

“Oh? Oh?! That’s all you have to say?” Shikamaru practically shouted, taking an angry step toward him. “Ino- she- You saw her soulmark the day you met us. Why didn’t you say anything? Do you know how long she- Are you really that heartless?”

Sai flinched at his words. He didn’t mean to but he couldn’t help it. Regaining some level of emotion also meant losing some of his composure. He hoped the others hadn’t noticed but he wasn’t the hopeful type. “I…”

Choji put a hand on Shikamaru’s shoulder. He looked just as upset as his friend but Choji was too gentle and kind-hearted to take out his anger on anyone. And for that, Sai was eternally grateful. “Shikamaru, maybe we should go. Shouldn’t this kind of thing be between soulmates?”

Shikamaru looked like he wanted to argue but he shook himself and took a deep breath to calm down. Sai knew Shikamaru could get scary when he wanted to and hurting his friend definitely put Sai in danger of becoming a victim of his intellect. Thank the sages for Choji or Sai was fairly certain he’d have a Shadow Stitch aimed at his head right now.

“Just… Just talk to her, man,” Shikamaru sighed tiredly, sounding several times his age, and turned to head back up the stairs, Choji trailing behind him. Sai half expected him to turn around to give him some kind of warning or threat not to mess this up and hurt his teammate but he didn’t. He just kept walking until it was just him and Ino. Alone. In a basement. With a dead rogue-ninja and a tiger staring at them. Not really the best setting for a heart to heart.

The two didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just pale green eyes boring into inky black. What was there to say? What was someone supposed to say when they found their soulmate? What if it should have been obvious they were soulmates from the start and one hadn’t said anything? What was someone who never wanted a soulmate supposed to do when his soulmate so clearly longed for one? Sai had so many questions and the answers to none.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ino asked, breaking the silence.

“I didn’t know.”

“Don’t give me that.”

It was true, in a sense. He really didn’t know. Sai had recognized the tiger when he saw it for the first time but only in the back of his mind. He was far from a master of emotions and farther from a master of his jutsu. Was the jutsu really even his then? It didn’t feel like it so maybe he didn’t recognize the mark on Ino’s arm as his own. 

Still, it was his art style. He’d recognized it immediately and always would. His art was such a big part of him and he didn’t dream of denying it so that couldn’t have been it. And it couldn’t be his lack of emotions because he wasn’t really lacking them, they were just suppressed. As guilty as it made him feel, it was very possible the truth was just that he didn’t want a soulmate. That he didn’t want to know what the universe had planned for him when it came to love.

“It just never occurred to me.”

Sai wasn’t lying but Ino didn’t seem to believe him. No one ever believed him. Not when it came to soulmates. But he wanted Ino to understand so he tried again.

“Remember when we met? When I said I didn’t want to look for my soulmate?”

Ino snorted and put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t need to look. She was right in front of you.”

Okay, he walked right into that one. “I wasn’t thinking about that. I would’ve said that to anyone.”

“Why?” Ino asked, her voice cracking. Sai noticed for the first time that her eyes were glossy. He felt… something. He couldn’t quite identify what it was yet but he knew it was a bad feeling. He couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry though. “I’ve always wanted to meet my soulmate, even before I really understood what my mark meant. I can’t imagine not wanting to find the one person who’s meant to love you unconditionally.”

That made Sai hesitate. He’d never heard it phrased that way particularly. It was making him doubt himself. Why had she said that? She didn’t know how much Sai struggled when it came to maintaining friendships or how lonely he’d been all those years after Shin died. She had no idea how rocky his relationship with love was or how much he craved it. She couldn’t fathom how much it pained him knowing it was always out of reach. Or maybe she could, with the soulbond and all. He cleared his throat. “I’m glad I met you and if I have to have a soulmate, I’m glad it’s you.”

“If you have to have one? What, do you wish you didn’t have one?”

“Sometimes.” Ino’s face dropped but Sai recovered quickly. “I think soulmates are wonderful but I’ve just felt like they’re for me, I suppose.”

“Are you one of those people who believe we should shape our own destiny?”

“No. Yes. Maybe? I don’t know.”

Ino laughed a bit and it sounded fond rather than angry. It gave Sai a spike of confidence. He smiled bashfully. 

“My apologies. I’m not very… articulate when it comes to how I feel. I’ve really only reconnected with my emotions since the war ended,” Sai admitted. Ino opened her mouth but Sai stopped her before she could say what he knew she was going to say. “And my emotional struggles have nothing to do with how I feel about having a soulmate. I think. I remember talking about it with my brother before…”

Something flashed in Ino’s eyes. “Your brother died when you were ten?”

Sai nodded. “You felt it through the soulbond?”

“And nothing after it,” Ino replied with a nod, “until the war. Probably when you saw him again.”

Sai looked down. “...I cried. I hadn’t cried since he died the first time.”

Ino made a sympathetic noise. Sai wasn’t really sure if it made him feel comforted or patronized. Ino seemed to sense he didn’t want to talk about it and that was probably for the better. “So you’ve talked about it with him? How you feel about soulmates?”

“Having a soulmate,” Sai corrected. How he felt about soulmates versus how he felt about having a soulmate were very different. “And yes. I didn’t know I had a soulmark until he told me. But… He never really understood. He was a romantic. I don’t think he really knew that some people just weren’t like that.”

“Like what?”

Sai’s face furrowed with frustration as he tried to find words. “I… I know love. I love my brother. I love Naruto. And Sakura. And maybe Sasuke. I love Kakashi-senpai and Captain Yamato. I love my art and my books. And I love… you. And I know what I feel is real. I think I’ve always felt it, even when I thought I didn’t have emotions and before I knew you were my soulmate. I like being with you but I don’t love you like Shikamaru loves Temari or like Sakura loves Sasuke. Is that okay?”

Sai hadn’t realized he was looking down until Ino took his hands, startling him into looking up at her. She looked a bit sad but not disappointed or angry. She offered him a gentle smile. “Yeah, it’s definitely okay, Sai. I mean, this isn’t really what I expected meeting my soulmate to be like but I’m glad it’s you. I don’t think I’ll mind missing out on some romantic fantasy if it means I get to be with you. If that’s what you want.”

Slowly, Sai nodded and curled his fingers around hers. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give you a romantic fantasy but I hope I can still make you happy. I want to see where this goes.”

_______________

Two years passed and Ino knew she and Sai weren’t really in a relationship.

They did couples things sometimes. They went out together fairly regularly. They ate at nice restaurants and went on quiet walks through the village. Sai sometimes slept over at her house and she sometimes slept at his apartment. Sai went with her to Naruto and Hinata’s wedding. And Shikamaru and Temari’s wedding. And Sasuke and Sakura’s. And Choji and Karui’s... There was a shocking number of weddings recently.

It was never romantic though. Their “dates” often had a few tag-alongs or didn’t seem all that different from what friends normally did. Sleeping together was never anything more than sleeping. She could count the number of times they’d just shared the bed on one hand. And they never slow danced at the weddings. Their friends didn’t even acknowledge they were together. Maybe they didn’t know. Or maybe they did and just thought they were just having fun with each other until they met their real soulmates. That was a depressing thought.

Ino tried not to let it bother her. She really liked Sai, that never changed, and she enjoyed all the things they did together. It was fun. Maybe even more fun than it would be with someone else since there weren’t any expectations and there weren’t dozens of eyes watching everything they did. Still, part of her longed to have the future she’d always expected. She tried to ignore the part of her before it became too much to keep inside.

But as a clan head, she couldn’t ignore it forever.

She was in some Yamanaka-Nara-Akimichi Clan meeting when it came up. Normally these meetings were uneventful, just a bunch of clan elders hooting about babies and food or whatever, so Ino had been zoning out while they bickered and shuffled papers around the table. But with Shikamaru and Choji both married, she should have expected it.

“...so that brings us to the issue of heirs,” an elder said, snapping Ino’s attention back to the meeting.

All eyes in the room immediately fell on her. She sat up a bit straighter. “What?”

“The Nara Clan head and Akimichi Clan heir have already found their partners and are close to securing their clans’ futures,” the elder went on. Her name was… Ino wanted to say Chizo? Wait, no. That was an Akimichi name. Chizo was that one over there with her hand deep in a plate of cookies. This was a Yamanaka. What was her name? Ino couldn’t remember for the life of her. “The Yamanaka Clan on the other hand…”

“You think I can’t lead the clan on my own?”

Another elder made a noncomitmental noise. This one’s name was Ezume, Ino was pretty sure. Or maybe Ezuko? Either way, he was a Nara. She knew that much. By the sages, she really should know her own clan elders’ names. She’d known them all her life. How was she this bad with names? It was like she’d gotten worse over the years. “We know your capabilities, Ino, but every clan head must have a husband or wife to help shoulder the responsibilities of leading the clan and bring life to the next generation.”

Ino could practically feel Shikamaru and Choji making faces behind her. The elders were trying to be nice about it but they were basically telling them their wives only mattered to bear children for them and keep some stress off their shoulders. If the clans’ stability didn’t rely on the elders so much, Ino would’ve dragged Temari and Karui in here to speak their minds and slap some sense into them years ago.

The Yamanaka elder was speaking again. Ino wanted to say her name was Fumiko but she was pretty sure she was just thinking about her cousin Fū. They looked kind of similar. What ever happened to him? She hadn’t seen him in years. “You’ve had plenty of time to search for your soulmate. If you haven’t found him, we will choose-”

“Ino’s found her soulmate,” Shikamaru interrupted. His voice dull and bored but his eyes were sharp and telling. Ino wanted to punch him but he was out of reach and she didn’t think the elders would appreciate it much.

“Oh?” the elder, Chizo this time, said, looking interested.

“I’ve heard nothing of this,” another Yamanaka spoke up, sounding annoyed. This one was named Haneen, or at least Ino was pretty sure. Close enough. Ino would consider that a win if she wasn’t struggling to think of a response.

“Uh…”

The elders looked displeased. “Why have we heard nothing of this?”

“Um…. 

Ino looked to Shikamaru and Choji for help but they were already making a break for the door, the traitorous bastards. She turned back to the elders’ angry faces, swallowed away her uneasiness, and steeled herself for the inevitable discomfort that was coming her way. ___________________

Sai was coming back from a mission with Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, Kakashi and Yamato when he saw Shikamaru and Choji barreling towards him with panic on their faces.

“We didn’t do it!” Naruto yelped immediately, practically springing away from them. “Tell Granny Tsunade it was just part of the mission!”

The two skidded to a stop and Naruto was met with confusion. “What?” 

“...Are you not coming from the Hokage’s office?”

“...No? We were just at a clan meeting. What were you doing?”

“Nothing!”

Sasuke shook his head and sighed while Sakura pinched her brow in exasperation. Sai and Yamato glanced at Kakashi then shared a deadpan look. Naruto really was an idiot sometimes. The Sixth Hokage was standing right next to them. Tsunade was finding out no matter what Shikamaru and Choji heard from them.

Sakura, always the most polite of the bunch, offered Shikamaru and Choji a smile. “Ignore them. Did you need us for something? Do I need to be at the hospital? Or did Kakashi-sensei lose some important paperwork again?”

“If it was really important they wouldn’t let me lose it,” Kakashi piped up lazily.

“We actually came here for Sai,” Choji spoke up. For once, he didn’t have his trusty bag of potato chips in hand. And Ino wasn’t there. That was concerning.

“Is something wrong?”

“Kind of,” Shikamaru said, looking a bit guilty as he scratched the back of his head. “So… I may or may not have told our clan elders that you and Ino are soulmates and they may or may not start harassing you about marrying her.”

Shikamaru spoke quickly and quietly and it took Sai a moment to realize what he was saying. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, however, didn’t seem to have the same problem.

“You and Ino are soulmates?!” the three screeched in unison.

“I… Yes?” Sai’s head swiveled to look at them in surprise. “You didn’t know?”

“How would we know?” Sakura asked. “Neither of you ever told us!”

“You’ve seen both our soulmarks.”

“Soulmarks are confusing!” Naruto exclaimed and Sai realized he probably should’ve known better than to expect Naruto to connect the dots. He and Hinata practically had the same soulmark, just in different colors, and it’d still taken them years to figure it out.

“We went together to your weddings.”

“I thought you two were just going as friends,” Sasuke admitted and he wasn’t exactly wrong. 

That made Sai hesitate. Were they friends? Or were they dating? How was he supposed to remember where they’d been in the relationship all that time ago?

“I’ve spent so much time with just the two of you,” Sakura said. “Are you saying I was third-wheeling on your dates?”

“I mean… No?”

“Wait, Ino’s soulmark is on her arm. Did you know since you met her after our first mission? Have you been dating since then?”

“No.” That was a question Sai could answer confidently. Kind of. Oh by the sages, he really didn’t know what he and Ino were doing, was he?

Sasuke opened his mouth to continue pressing him but Kakashi put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him before he could begin. “You five run along. I’d like to talk to Sai alone. Yamato, make sure they don’t destroy anything. Any more than it’s already been destroyed, at least.”

“No promises,” Yamato said drily and began ushering the younger ninja away from the former ANBU. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

“I want ramen!”

“I want barbecue!”

“Ramen!”

“Barbecue!” 

“That’s literally all we eat! Can’t you two pick something else?”

Sai watched the group walk away, bickering until they were out of sight, before turning his attention back to Kakashi. The man was watching him with a peculiar look in his eye that Sai didn’t understand. He waited for him to say something but Kakashi remained silent and the seconds soon stretched into minutes.

“Let’s take a walk,” Kakashi said eventually and Body Flickered onto the rooftops. Sai followed him without missing a beat.

“Why did you want to talk to me, senpai?” Sai said once it became clear Kakashi wasn’t going to say something first.

“You looked stressed when Shikamaru said the clan might suggest you and Ino getting married. It takes a lot to get a reaction out of you,” Kakashi said nonchalantly. “I just want you to know you can talk to me if you need someone.”

“I don’t know if there’s really anything to say.” That wasn’t really true but after explaining himself to Shin, and his teammates, and Ino, and Ino’s teammates, Sai had accepted he didn’t really have the vocabulary to express how he felt. But it never stopped him from trying. “I’ve never wanted romance. I like what I have with Ino but it isn’t romance. Everyone expects us to… be like every other soulmate. Be in love, get married, have kids. I’m not really opposed to marrying her but I don’t really want to. The only reason we would is for clan politics. Marriage is supposed to be this ceremony of love and I just don’t… I don’t really feel what everyone else is feeling.”

“Because of your time in ROOT?”

That question was expected but Sai tried not to let it bother him. He was not successful. “I don’t know. Maybe but I don’t think so.”

“Is it a lack of attraction?”

“What?” 

That was such a strange question but Kakashi didn’t really seem to understand Sai’s confusion. “Is it a lack of attraction?”

“I don’t… I suppose she’s attractive.” Sai never really thought about her that way but he knew other people thought she was. He’d been hearing it for so long that he believed it. But were those his own feelings or just the influence of others? He remembered wanting to call her ugly when they met but he thought everyone was ugly so he’d called her gorgeous because he thought she’d like it. And he just kept doing it. He’d done it so much that it’d just stuck with him and he’d forgotten the origin of the nickname. By the sages, was every compliment he’d given her the offspring of a lie?

Surprisingly, a look of understanding spread across Kakashi’s masked features. “So you aren’t attracted to her?”

“I just said she’s attractive.”

“That isn’t the same as being attracted to her.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A few years ago, Master Jiraiya gave me this book he’d written that was rejected by his publishers,” Kakashi began and Sai didn’t really know where he was going with this. “You know he writes romances, right? Well, he got this piece of criticism that said if you’re going to write about love and relationships, you need to understand that it’s not all romantic. Or sexual. You can imagine how confused Jiraiya was.”

Sai was kind of lost but he nodded along anyway.

“So he did some research. And not the kind of research he normally does. He actually talked to anthropologists and professors from different nations, I think. He wrote a character that didn’t experience romantic or sexual attraction. She still knew love and could appreciate a pretty face but she knew she wasn’t quite experiencing what everyone else was feeling.” Kakashi paused. “The word for not experiencing romantic attraction is aromantic. The word for not experiencing sexual attraction is asexual. They’re not really common words, it took Jiraiya a long time to come across them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t heard them…”

Kakashi trailed off and Sai’s brain tried to catch up. Sexual attraction? Romantic attraction? They were different? Romantic feelings were supposed to be connected by some kind of desire? Desire to do what? That just sounded really weird. Sai had never heard someone phrase it that way yet it made sense in the most confusing way. “So… wanting to have a romantic relationship has to do with attraction?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve never felt that way. I didn’t actually know I’m asexual or aromantic until I read the book and I saw myself in that character.”

“You’re like me?” Sai said in surprise. Almost instantly, his world felt a bit brighter. Like everything was grey and he was seeing color for the first time.

Kakashi nodded. “You know Guy’s my soulmate?”

“Really?” That was actually really shocking but both men covered themselves at pretty much all times, leaving no room for a soulmark to peak out, so there was no way Sai ever would’ve seen either of their soulmarks. Maybe there was a reason for that. Probably not. “I thought you two were just friends.”

“We are, in a way, but we’re also more than that,” Kakashi said, slowing down a bit to try to find the right words. “Guy and I tried to have a relationship when we realized we’re soulmates but it didn’t really work. Guy prefers women and I’m not even sure if he likes men like that. We haven’t talked about it in awhile. And I never really liked anyone that way. But once I heard the words aromantic and asexual, I felt whole. Like I could explain my feelings and I wasn’t missing anything. I didn’t feel broken anymore. After I told him, it was like everything started making sense.”

“Are you two still together?”

Kakashi nodded. “Things got a lot easier when we gave up… The word Jiraiya used in his notes was amatonormativity. That’s kind of like, um, the belief that romantic and sexual relationships are the peak of human experience and everyone should prioritize those kinds of relationships over everything else. You and Ino don’t have to do what our society expects you to do. You can just do whatever feels right.”

Sai nodded slowly. Ino had mentioned once that it felt freeing to not necessarily follow the traditional route of dating but they’d still always felt that pressure to act like a couple. It felt like a huge weight being lifted off his chest to hear that it was okay to do just be. And the fact someone he knew and respected thought it was normal and even encouraged it was priceless.

He opened his mouth to thank the other man but his throat suddenly swelled shut and all that came out was a choking noise. It surprised him, he’d never felt enough emotion for him to be rendered unable to speak. Kakashi looked surprised as well but his eyes soon crinkled with fondness. 

“Go to her, Sai.”

Sai was already moving.

____________________

Ino wasn’t expecting to find Sai waiting at her front door when she got home from getting drilled by her elders at the clan meeting.

It looked like he’d been there for awhile. He’d taken out a piece of charcoal and began doodling on her doorstep. It was rather beautiful but she knew she’d have to hose it off sooner or later unless she wanted dusty footprints tracked through her house. He seems pretty focused on his drawing but not enough that he didn’t jump up in surprise at the sound of his soulmate approaching.

“We don’t have to get married!” he blurted out upon her arrival. The piece of charcoal fell out of his hand and cracked on the cement.

“Um, okay,” Ino said slowly. “Really weird thing to say at the beginning of a conversation, Sai, but okay…”

Sai at least had the decency to look a bit embarrassed and hurried to explain himself. “Shikamaru and Choji told you about your meeting.”

“Oh.” Ino felt the muscles in her shoulders tense up. By the sages, that meeting really had been hell. “And…?”

“Apparently my teammates didn’t know we were soulmates. Sakura might be coming here to yell at you soon, by the way,” Sai told her and it took Ino a moment to fully process what he was saying. Had they really not known? Sakura was her best friend. Ino talked to her about Sai all the time. And Naruto had seemed pretty happy when they told him they were going to his wedding together. And Sasuke had a Sharingan for crying out loud! He really should’ve noticed. Sai didn’t really seem concerned about it though. “But that’s not important. I talked with Kakashi and…”

Sai cut himself off, his excitement fading as doubt overtook him. Ino took his hands, ignoring all the charcoal dust on them, and offered an encouraging smile. “And?”

“I think… I think I’m aromantic. And asexual,” Sai told her and he smiled. It wasn’t his usual awkward smile though. He looked genuinely relieved and maybe even a little bit happy. “Apparently some people don’t have romantic feelings at all. There’s a word for it. Aromantic. I think- I think that’s me. I still care about you and I like being with you but Kakashi told me being aromantic is normal and it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me or that the universe made a mistake making us soulmates. It just means we can- We can just be us. Sai and Ino. And Sai and Ino don’t have to listen to anything anyone tells us to do. And that means we don’t have to get married. Unless you want to…?”

Ino watched Sai’s face carefully as it flashed between excitement, awkwardness, nervousness, and joy. She’d never seen him express so many feelings, let alone all together in such a short period of time. It was cute. And endearing. Especially when he stumbled over his words like this. By the sages, she loved him. And now she knew he loved her, even if it wasn’t the way she loved him. She was okay with that though. She was definitely okay with that. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Screw tradition. Forget the clan,” Ino said, breaking into a smile as she put her arms around Sai’s shoulders so she could look up into his eyes. “I like what we have. I don’t care if it’s not what I thought I’d grow up to have or if it’s not what my family wants for me. I just want to be with you and it doesn’t matter if we’re friends, lovers, neither, or something between.”

Sai’s smile grew and he just looked so happy. “We’re soulmates.”

“Yeah. That’s what we are. We’re soulmates.”

More AroWriMo Fics By Me, Posted on Ao3, Posted on FFN

#Aro Writing Month 2021 #arowrimo #aromantic writing month 2021 #oneshot #fanfiction #naruto #naruto: shippuden #saino #sai #sai (naruto) #ino #ino yamanaka #yamanaka ino #soulmate au #soulmates #soulmarks #soulbonds #aromantic soulmate au #aro sai #ace sai #aromantic sai #asexual sai #aroace sai #aromantic character #asexual character #asexual #aromantic #aspec #asexuality #aromanticism

[thedreadvampy]

this is kind of a Hot Take (and rlly long) so don't feel pressured to post this

also no one cancel thedreadvampy over posting this ask if she does these are my beliefs and not necessarily hers kthx

I'm honestly really uncertain why people are so militant about aphobia on this site. like obviously aphobes are Not Nice People and it's good to be against their shitty beliefs. But I've been on this site for ~5 years and I have never, in my memory, seen an aphobe (with the few exception of like. literal nazis but their main label isn't aphobe). I have seen a lot of people who were then harassed/cancelled being called aphobes in addition to a lot of other things like (homophobic, racist, abusive, etc) but as far as I bothered to figure out, the label of aphobe came from one specific phrase they used or one post they reblogged (though I can't be bothered to Deep Research so I genuinely don't know on this one).

(I have seen casual acephobia in my own personal life. however, that is not Tumblr.)

I have seen scores of posts along the lines of "aphobes are bad" "aphobes dni" etc etc.

Maybe it's just who I follow, but it seems like there's a lot more anti-aphobe sentiment than aphobes. Which is good! It's the goal! However, I think it's possible that that anti-aphobe sentiment has not become "look how few aphobes there are! yay!" it's "there are hidden aphobes all around us and you have to interrogate everyone to know who to ostracize"

You're a fairly popular figure in the mechs/tma fandoms and the thing about Tumblr is that it hates popular figures. And more than that, you're visible, so a) people will see if you answer a bunch of questions about ace things, and b) you exist in everyone's brains more than little blogs.

to be clear. to be absolutely crystal 100% clear: I am not saying that people got together and went "let's interrogate all the popular blogs so we can pretend theyre acephobic and have fun bullying people," I'm saying it's possible that what was once a positive emotion, "we don't tolerate intolerant people" has possibly, in some people, morphed into a fear that intolerant people are hiding all around them. And frankly, that fear can be understandable (not right, not kind, but understandable), especially if they face hate irl and their only outlet for emotion is tumblr. shit, Tumblr is one of my emotional outlets.

I don't think it's bad to engage with these people in good faith, or to answer questions, but I think it's possible that some of them are coming from the "intolerant people are hiding all around us and must be ferreted out" kind of perspective instead of a "hey I wanna check that this person isn't an intolerant asshole before following/supporting them" or "I want to engage with a person who may be ignorant" (I'm not attempting to imply that you're ignorant). Im not saying "not answer their questions" this is just, like, my opinion. I'm not making a lot of actionable statements here.

that's my whole Hot Take, hopefully I made some kind of sense, I just honestly feel kind of mad on your behalf that you have to go thru an interrogation to be Not Tumblr Cancelled. If people were generally having a nuanced discussion then that would be fine but you've already stated several times that ace/aspec people are valid and deserve love and respect etc etc. which as an aspec person makes me feel that your blog is safe for me, and I don't feel the need to play 20 Questions Are You Sure You Aren't An Aphobe

I don't know how much of this I entirely agree with and I refuse to think

(not about this. just in general. today I refuse to think)

my main response to this is:

a) I think my confusion is I have less than 1500 followers I think I always assumed the You Are Now A Public Figure People Have Opinions On mark had to be higher than that but this appears to have been a totally incorrect assumption

b) I don't feel like. a threat of Cancellation except inasmuch as I don't want Kofi to eventually get any kind of kickback if I turn out to be or people understand me to be a shitty person. I didn't ask for a platform or do anything to deserve it, if I get distressed it's largely just that I don't want to be a shitty person! and I have a whole thing about. I don't ever feel secure in my ability to say I'm NOT being shitty so like if enough people start saying AH RUTH THEDREADVAMPY IS A GARBAGE PERSON I definitely do stay wondering if they're right even if I think my position is morally defensible. like I'm very easy to get into a spiral of I think that's highly defensible but maybe I'm just in denial/trying to cover my ass/self-justifying so I can avoid accountability/etc. like this is a thing and it's why I'm very uncomfortable with absolutism, a lot of my family in my experience have a phenomenal capacity for denial and for rewriting reality into something they Fully Believe despite all the evidence, and so I'm really conscious of the possibility that I'm doing that and I wouldn't. know about it. it's a really really powerful subconscious force and that's been like. a big fear point for me my whole life. that I could be being a cunt and be obviously being a cunt and be so deep in denial that it just doesn't register at all. this is like. the thing I fear most. So I DO want people to tell me if I'm being a dick because the only way I can 100% know I'm not just in denial is if I can trust people to call me in, but I really, really, really struggle with when people say I'm being a dick and I disagree, not because they're harassing me necessarily but just because it really sends me into a spiral of doubting my own ability to be sure about like, anything. at all. it's a whole unreality thing which is, uh, it's MINE to deal with, it's not something I would want to put on other people, but it very much does affect my responses and I didn't mean to write this but hey, no therapy last week and it shows.

oh also c) on reflection I don't agree that there's very little aphobia on Tumblr (although as I've said I'm not ace or aro so my opinion should hold little weight) but I do think that there's a lack of give and take, not just in aphobia stuff but also in general, in these kinds of conversations, like sometimes yeah people are actively hateful but I don't think there's any room for misunderstanding, poor phrasing, or questioning, and I understand that that's coming from a really genuine place of pain and devaluation of aro/ace experiences but I also think people jump straight to assuming active malice very fast, and often explicitly consider "actively not stating an opinion" to be an offence on the level of "actively staying a harmful opinion," which I think is unhelpful. like. we learn by listening, there are times in my life where I would have been lying at the time to agree unconditionally with something like "I think we should believe survivors" (I was a 2000s teen who hung out with 4channers) but I also was conscious of the harm that it would do to publicly debate from the perspective that No We Shouldn't Believe Survivors, so you know I waited and I listened and I thought about it and ultimately I came to a position I could say with my chest. but like. The online social more that you Have to have an opinion and I Have to hear it to prove that you have the Right opinion is. uncomfortable to me to say the least. I don't think it gives you much room to learn and improve, especially given that everything on the internet is permanent and often treated as if it forever reflects your current beliefs. like I have changed my opinions So Much since I was 16 and if someone went back through a tag on my blog to Prove My Bad Opinions they could paint pretty much any picture they wanted with 12 years of changing opinions.

anyway yeah like. no I don't fully agree with this ask but I appreciate the alternate perspective. I also did not mean to write another wall of text I'm just very much In A Brain Hole today and sometimes words Just Happen.

#i don't want this to pop up in Discourse tags that will double ruin my brain off scrolling experience #but i do want people to be able to filter this stuff out #I'm gonna go wiiiiiiith #thedreadvampy adiscourse #so I'll try to tag everything surrounding the question of aphobia and me with that #no gonnae tag my general depression posting with it though that's just What This Blog Exists For

[guardiandae]

Why Asexual Awareness Is Important To Me

because growing up, I was told that one day I’d get married and have a honeymoon. like it was as inevitable as death. it terrified me. I didn’t know there was any other option. “You’ll understand when you’re older.” 

because when I started dating, I was never exactly opposed to sexual experiences. but I got rejected anyway out of impatience, because I didn’t pick up on clues, or I didn’t initiate. I’m still not sure. ‘We’ve been dating a few weeks and you don’t wanna do anything, so forget it.’ You didn’t ask. How am I supposed to know? In retrospect, I’m glad.

because when I came out to my mother as gay, it felt so simple to me. matter of fact. how could it be any different? but she made sure it hurt. she twisted my words and screamed at me. she called me an embarrassment. she asked if i’d ever had sex with a girl, and of course I said no. why would I have to have sex to know? why is straight the default when no one else at my age has had sex either? why would sex ever be a prerequisite? but she screamed at me that it didn’t count then. I couldn’t be gay. didn’t count. she made sure that I ended up in tears. and to this day I see other LGBT screaming at aces that we don’t count. That not having sex or not feeling sexual attraction towards the same sex is homophobic. the same homophobic arguments that were used against me when I identified as a lesbian, recycled by the people whose rights I’ve stood and fought for my entire life.

because when I had my first Real girlfriend, my first Love, my first sexual experiences, I was never frightened, but also never into it. I didn’t understand why it didn’t click for me. Why I was never struck breathless by her beautiful form but instead, oh no. How am I supposed to react so she doesn’t take offense? because she was Gorgeous, but whatever I felt was clearly... lacking. not enough. and I felt broken, broken, broken.

because in my time, the A in LGBTQIA often did stand for ally. Sometimes asexuality was mentioned offhandedly, interchangeably. an afterthought. barely a footnote. but I never knew what it was. The information I was given was limited. aces aren’t interested in sex. as if it were all wrapped up in a neat little bow for them, content and perfect. but i was interested in sex. how could i not be? it haunted me. I didn’t know you could feel romantic attraction separately from sexual attraction, or that aces could deal with sex without feeling attraction. I thought I was “gay but just really bad at it.”

because I spent so many sleepless nights crying myself to sleep wondering and worrying if the person I was dating really knew and believed that I loved them even if I couldn’t feel sexual attraction towards them.

because I was so terrified of sex that I became obsessed with it. I thought I had to learn as much as I could and that would somehow cure me. Read articles, learn in theory how to do the acts, what to expect, how to behave. Consume fiction, consume porn, brace myself for the inevitable, condition myself to grow into it. All I managed to do was become very good at writing smut and still have a complete disconnect in real life.

because when I finally questioned myself, my ex boyfriend, who was asexual, told me flat out that because I wrote and enjoyed fictional porn, I “didn’t count” as asexual. because I thought that he, as someone who had already claimed the label of asexual, surely knew better than me what it meant. and nothing online that I could find, at the time, contradicted him. I thought to myself, but... that’s fiction. but nothing supported me. so I cried and then I buried it and I tried even harder to fit in with my sexualized peers and didn’t let myself think about it anymore. for years.

because I admittedly put myself into really dangerous situations, thinking that if I could just lose my virginity and get it over with, I’d be better off down the line for someone else. like it was something I could just break out of me.

because despite literally years of trying to condition myself to think and behave sexually online, to roll with the jokes that made me cringe, eventually it got to me. I started having breakdowns, panic attacks, crying fits, and I had no idea why or what was wrong with me.

because when I revisited asexuality and finally found just a single line that said aces can masturbate and enjoy porn and still be ace, it was the single biggest relief of my life. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. I didn’t have to keep breaking myself trying to fit where I didn’t belong. I wasn’t broken in the first place.

because when I came out as ace, on my first ace week, several of my fandom friends did as well, and none of us had known the others felt the same way. We’d been so lost and isolated and alone and now we weren’t anymore.

because just knowing and being able to set boundaries for myself and give myself permission to walk away from conversations that became too uncomfortable, was a tremendous relief on my mental health and happiness.

because when I came out, my blog was posted on r*dd*t for the lulz and I had anons coming to harass me and ask me if I had been assaulted and traumatized and wishing for me to seek a ‘cure’. Complete fucking strangers. I saw my friends get death threats and rape threats just for saying ‘I’m ace’.

because despite personally writing smut and knowing other aces who write smut, I’ve still been personally attacked and accused of ‘hating nsfw’ and I’ve seen aphobes react like aces existing is somehow a fucking moral judgement against non-aces

because even aces who are completely sex-repulsed shouldn’t have to suck it up and act like they personally approve of sex in any form, in order to make other sex-crazed people mind their own fucking business and give them a ‘pass’. I’m not ‘one of those good aces’ just because I like fictional porn, to a degree. and I’m not breaking into your fucking house to stop you from wanking just because I personally don’t like a thing. It’s called personal preferences. one person having negative associations with sex is not a reflection on you personally. Someone saying “I don’t like sex, it disgusts me” is not the same as someone literally saying “you’re disgusting for having sex.” Grow the fuck up.

because not knowing that asexuality was an option caused me years of pain, and being given wrong information and gatekeeping held me back even longer in that prison.

because there are still misconceptions about what it means to be asexual.

because I remember what it was like to be stuck in that dark place, feeling broken and confused and alone because I didn’t quite fit the mold, and I want to help others find themselves sooner.

because despite all of the bullshit thrown at us, embracing my asexuality has made me the happiest I’ve ever been. I love being asexual. I love being me.

because I’ve had numerous people come to me privately inquiring about their own asexuality, just for the sake of confirming it privately, and then vow to never come out publicly because they’ve seen all of the hate and harassment aces get, even from fellow LGBTQ folks, and they couldn’t handle that. and I don’t blame them one little bit. it would be naive to pretend that doesn’t exist. it does, and it’s ugly, and it hurts so much to see. but just remember, there are so many more people who will love and support you.

you don’t have to come out. but just knowing for yourself? is so much better. and there are so many more of us than you’d think and you’re not alone.

#asexuality #actually asexual #ace week #long post #aphobia

[famous-aces]

Simone Weil

Who: Simone Adolphine Weil

What: Philosopher, Mystic, and Political Activist

Where: French-Jewish (active largely in France, Spain, and UK) 

When: February 3, 1909 - August 24, 1943

(Image Description: a black and white photo of Weil in the 1940s on the street in Marseilles. She is a pale woman with an oval face and big round glasses. Her hair is short and dark and fluffy. She is wearing a beret and a cap.  She is in her early thirties but I would have thought she was older. Behind her are buses, sidewalk [with trees] and curb. There are some other people on the street behind her. End ID)

There isn't much about Simone Weil that isn't odd and often contradictory. A pacifist who went to war, a Christian mystic who refused baptism, a writer whose most important works were not published until after her death, a religious humanist, intelligent but perpetually naïve, an ethnically Jewish woman utterly disconnected from her heritage, despite embracing the questioning and intellectualism that characterize much of the Jewish faith.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls her "a philosopher of margins and paradoxes" and André Gide called her “the patron saint of all outsiders.". Today she an important left-leaning philosopher, but her real influence did not come until after her death. But between 1995 and 2012, more than half a century after her death, over 2,500 newly scholarly articles about her were published.  She inspired the likes of Albert Camus, Jean-Luc Godard, Pankaj Mishra, Flannery O'Connor, and Pope Paul VI. Camus said she was "the only great spirit of our times." But her legacy is extremely mixed (with good reason) and some claim she was insane or unbalanced. Even people who greatly admired her say she was a bit odd.  Susan Sontag calls her "one of the most uncompromising and troubling witnesses to the modern travail of the spirit." Which may be an accurate description. She was strange, often contrary, sadly comedic, and, indeed, sometimes deeply troubling. Which is odd, considering that her heart was almost certainly in the right place; regardless of her naïveté and occasional hypocrisy her goal was truth and justice. And as mixed as her legacy was there is a lot to admire in Weil's steadfastness and dedication to others. Indeed her uniqueness of character almost makes her worthy of study even without her influence.

Weil's heart was in the right place (she had a darker side that I will get to).  She was extremely dedicated to the workers, the poor, and the otherwise less fortunate, and was critical of both capitalism and communism. Eventually this dedication extended to God, not necessarily religion, but an Abrahamic God.

She wrote extensively on a number of subjects including labor, management, politics, war, peace, religion and spirituality, among other subjects throughout her life. She was an activist who threw herself into the fray, mind, soul, and body. This last despite being in quite poor physical health for all her life, including suffering from tuberculosis. Her intellectualism and dedication to others began in early childhood. She was always reading and forming opinions. At age five Weil refused to eat sugar to be in solidarity with French soldiers in World War I (then raging).  Her activism often got her in trouble at school, something that didn't change when she went from student to teacher. She was always something of an outsider among her peers.

She was extremely political, altruistic, self-sacrificing, and warm hearted throughout her life. As an adult she worked largely as a writer and teacher, inturupted to spend time incognito working in an automobile factory to get first hand experience/accounts of the plight of workers and the psychological damages caused by industrialization. She was involved in the 1933 general strike in France. Ultimately she was booted from several teaching gigs because of her politics, activism, and contributions to leftist journals. 

She briefly fought against the Fascists in Spain (1936) but was very clumsy and a poor shot due to her terrible eyesight. No one really knew what to do with her, but she was dedicated. Weil ultimately ended up injuring herself with hot oil and her parents came and took her away.

Around this time she became very interested in Catholicism. She was never baptized, however, because her religious interests were far broader than one faith, extending to numerous religious traditions of the East and West, and she disagreed with some of the more brutal moments in the Bible. She had sort of her own conception of God and faith, she called it fundamentally Christian, but it was really her own philosophy with a grounding in the Abrahamic concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and above all omnibenevolent God.

It is important to note that despite being ethnically Jewish Weil was in no way religiously Jewish and has been criticized as downright antisemetic. Having barely read anything of hers beyond a little for this project I cannot say without a doubt if she was, but what I have heard described certainly worrisome. This is obviously not exhaustive and she may have said far worse but she was critical of the Torah (without realizing a lot of the things she loved about Christianity actually came from it), critical of the cruelty of the "Old Testament"/Talmudic God (as if Christianity didn't embrace those actions perhaps more than the Jewish faith), claimed that Hitler was no worse than any other colonizer, while comparing Judaism/Jewish people to the Roman Empire/Romans (she hated the Roman Empire). So be aware of that, especially given the era -- both the one Weil was writing in and our own. Her family was secular, she never interacted with Judaism on any real level, so it is possible -- given the political climate at the time and France's history of antisemitism -- Weil was misled, but given the fact that her political views changed throughout her life (starting as a communist and ultimately abandoning it) and the fact that she was so open hearted elsewhere is saddening and negates the ignorance argument.  It does seem she failed to understand the weight and reality of what she was saying/critiquing. She was vehemently against racism in other forms, but never seemed to make the connection. According to some sources she was always shocked to be called out on hypocrisy (which she was, more than once). So maybe there is something to be said for her just not getting it. This is not an excuse for hatred, but ignorance might be a huge part of the problem.

After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Weil and her parents fled and began a life in exile, first in the US, then in England.  In England Weil wrote her best known work, L'Enracinement, prélude à une déclaration des devoirs envers l'être humain (The Need for Roots: Prelude Towards a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind) (written 1943, but it wasn't published until 1949). During this time she worked for the French Resistance, although exactly in what capacity seems to be unknown. But her punishing work against the Nazis and penchant for self-denial ultimately ended up costing her her life at age 34 of either heart failure from malnutrition or tuberculosis. 

(Image Description: the cover of one of Weil's many notebooks. On it she has written "3 (1941)" in the top left corner. She has covered the rest of it in writing in a bunch of different languages including Greek and Sanskrit [maybe?]. All of it is written in squares/rectangles with one rectangle in the middle with shapes/writing in it. End ID)

Like The Need for Roots most of her work was printed posthumously. Her ouevre has been translated into other languages, including English, Arabic, and German as she reached international acclaim.  During her life only a few of her works were published of the 20-some volumes that survive today. Her most important works include (French / English) L'Iliade ou le poème de la force / The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (1940), La Pesanteur et la grâce / Gravity and Grace (1947), Attente de Dieu / Waiting for God (1950), Lettre à un religieux / Letter to a Priest (1951), Oppression et Liberté / Oppression and Liberty (1955) among others, including a lot of eccentric, esoteric, and diverse notebooks kept throughout her life, like the one above.

Probable Orientation: Aroace

As is probably obvious I do not quite know what to make of Weil, but one thing I can tell you is she was definitely asexual.

Weil's sexlessness (and by extension asexuality) has long been part of the narrative oddness of her life. The fact that she shunned physical and romantic relationships is often thought of as part of the pathetic humor as her personality. Clumsy, naïve, downright weird, sexless has become part of that persona, that cloak of oddity. 

People love to claim political reasons for others chastity and Weil is no exception. There has to be some reason beyond natural disinterest. The alternative is too foreign or strange for allos to fathom. All of these suppositions are equally aphobic. The idea that asexuality must be a conscious choice rather than a natural part of a person is extremely damaging as is the idea that not feeling sexual/romantic attraction/desiring sex/romance is unnatural.  There have been people who try to explain away Weil's lack of sexual desire as well: some Christian writers say she was devoting herself to God years before she found the church (Weil herself says the idea of pursuing what she calls "purity" struck her at 16, she would not find Catholicism for more than a decade), to certain subgroups of feminists her sexlessness a conscious choice to escape the patriarchy. But really it seems much more to be her sexual orientation than a political statement. Weil was a woman who made a lot of political statements, constantly, but the avoidance of sexual contact seemed natural rather than put on. 

For one thing she spurned physical contact, but only that with sexual intent. She didn't spurn friendly contact and she would kiss her friends in a platonic way more common in her era. Weil wasn't prudish nor offended by the idea of sex. When she was asked if she was seeing anyone she laughed, but was unbothered, it was more like she thought the idea of her dating was ridiculous rather than looking down on the idea. She had many friends both male and female. 

 In her teen years Weil started dressing oddly so that no one would find her physically attractive. She had a reputation from youth as being a weirdo in part due to her asexuality, but an attractive one. Although it seems that people, especially boys, had a mixed response to her attempts to mask her beauty. Some of them said it was a shame, others said she was never attractive in the first place.

Many of her critics in the modern day claim her odd traits and behaviors can be explained away by extreme sexual repression, once again giving into that belief that sex makes us normal and whole.

Also like many aroaces it seems that Weil put her love and attention into someone or something other than a significant other/partner. For many of them it is a specific friend or family member, for others it is a passion or cause. These are the historical figures dubbed to be "married to their work". This includes the likes of Erdős, Rankin, Franklin, Santos-Dumont, Nightingale, Wang, Woodson, and Tesla. This is not to say they were friendless, indeed some of them have extremely close relationships but overall these are people who dedicate themselves utterly and completely to their passion and their work. People with more than drive. People who are happiest not in a romantic/sexual relationship, but when doing what they love. I think Weil is part of that category. Her love was not for one person but for nearly the whole of the world. 

(Image Description: a photo of Weil as a young woman/teenager. She is a pretty and pale woman with fluffy dark hair, dark eyes, and full lips. She is not yet wearing her glasses.  She is shown from the neck up. End ID)

Quotes:

"The idea of purity, with all that this word can imply for a Christian [so, virginity], took possession of me at the age of sixteen, after a period of several months during which I had been going through the emotional unrest natural in adolescence. This idea came upon me while I was contemplating a mountain landscape and little by little it was imposed upon me in an irresistible manner." 

-Simone Weil, letter sent to a priest friend on May 15, 1942. (Years after the fact Weil attributed her lack of interest in sex to an inclination to Christianity, but it sounds as if she herself is trying to explain away her lack of sexual attraction or interest. This is something a lot of baby aspecs still do, try to explain away why they aren't interested in sex or romance. I know I did.)

"The Red Virgin" 

-The taunting nickname given to Weil by her classmates due to her chasteness and lack of romantic interest.  She was also referred to as "the Martian" for being "inhuman" and was widely mocked for being aspec. 

"As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love.”

-Sir Richard Reeds (due to the fact that, despite being chronically ill with a fatal disease she continued to work for the French Resistance while also not eating anything above the French ration to show her solidarity.)

(Image Description: a colorized photo of Weil from 1936 when she was fighting in Spain. She is wearing a dark military uniform with a dark bandana around her neck. Her dark hair is even darker than usual. She has a rifle on her back. There are some men behind her on a fairly quiet street. End ID) 

#queer #lgbtq #asexual #ace #history #aromantic #aro #20th century #authors #europe #activists #academics #jewish #France #French #philosophers #Simone Weil #bio

[twyella]

"I'm not ______ist I just believe ________ist statements!"

I am so fucking fed up with some of the teachers at my school, because they are a master at this

Among other people, the headmaster and my old RE teacher have both said exactly this (excluding the example they used): 'I'm not sexist, but (!!) boys and girls learn differently, completely differently. So I teach boys and girls, and treat them, completely differently.' And they give stupid examples in the form of sweeping generalisations that I could immediately give you more than seven counter examples, and I barely talk to people in my year, so you know they're pretty fucking far off. Additionally, sometimes the generalisations they make don't even make sense? Like they say 'boys do this, which is completely different to how girls do (exactly the same thing worded slightly differently)'

And it's just....Urgh.

So fed up with people who say "I'm not sexist but" "I'm not aphobic but" "I'm not transphobic but" "I'm not racist but" etc etc etc

As far as I'm aware, there are maybe three possible things that could come after that that are even vaguely okay

1) "....but lots of people around me are and that fucking sucks"

2)"....but I know jackshit about this, so if I fuck up please feel free to call me out on it, I will try to improve but rn I honestly haven't a clue what I'm doing wrong, sorry, I'd like to learn"

3) ".....but I'm currently trying to counter shitty ideas people gave me when I was little, I'm working on it but please like...punch me in the arm or something if I fuck up. Like, hard, don't just let me mess up"

And speaking of racism....

The other thing that really fucking frustrates me is people using the fact that they are arguably oppressed to opppress others or get away with murder

For example, a girl in my class was once causing utter havoc in the classroom during the lesson - talking over the teacher, yelling across the room to her friends, not staying seated, not even pretending to be doing her work, insulted the teacher....You get the gist. The teacher tried getting her to stop several times, but she just laughed and behaved even worse. Eventually, the teacher told her to leave the classroom and that they were calling some of the more important staff to deal with her, essentially. This (non white) student promptly kicked up a massive fuss and started yelling about how it was discrimination, how the teacher could get in so much trouble for racism, how she would report them to such and such authority, tell the headmaster on them.....And I was just sitting there, very annoyed and more than a little incredulous because what the fuck do you mean the teacher is being racist? You practically destroyed the classroom and haven't done any work for the past five lessons! You should've been called out on this shit much earlier, and for fuck's sake, you're kind of minimising how bad racism can actually be by acting like the height of it is you getting a detention for appalling behaviour, don't you think?

And there were...a lot of incidents like that. Also some boys claiming they were getting told off for reasons that were sexist or homophobic in nature (....given that said boys were both homophobic themselves and explicitly denied being gay, I have no idea where they decided them being "treated badly" (note the sarcasm) was homophobic) and these boys treated it like a joke. Which was pretty bad. But so much worse were the people who acted like they genuinely believed what they were saying, like the fact that they couldn't be rude and disrespectful and hurtful to literally everyone, refuse tow ork, impede other peoples work, and constantly break rules as well as often borderline bullying was some sort of horrifying discrimination

It just makes me so fucking tired

As well as black students specifically saying white people are shit, not fit to live, whatever, then claiming it's fine because they're black and it's about white people, gay guys claiming it's fine to be blatantly homophobic, transphobic, and so on, because they're lgbt, girls claiming it's fine to be awful and stereotype boys constantly because boys are the favoured ones or whatever weird way they phrased it....

Picking on trans and gay people specifically for that identity is STILL transphobic and homophobic no matter what your own orientation is

Being specifically insulting or death threats (yeah, hahaha it was "just a joke", but you threatened to kill them and the kid doesn't look like they think it's that funny) due to someone's race is still racist, no matter what race you are, or they are for that matter

Being discriminatory to any gender is still sexist, no matter what your or their gender is

"Yeah but I'm a girl and they're a girl so it's totally okay for me to be blatantly sexist!"

No. No it's fucking not. Shut up.

It's not acceptable

Frankly, I don't even think jokes about this are particularly good, but apparently I'm in the minority there

But if it's bordering anything close to being even vaguely semi serious, if it's more of a "joke" than anything...Please just keep your trap shut and reconsider what you were thinking.

I honestly don't understand why so many people struggle with this concept

Oh and a reminder - saying "I'm not _______ but ______ statement" means absolutely fuckall! It's still bad.

On a related note - "No offense but I hate you/you're an awful person/you're fucking scum/go jump off a cliff......" are also godawful things to say! Tacking on "no offense" does not make it magically okay to insult, hurt, belittle, or even encourage someone to commit suicide. What is fukcing wrong with people. And if you instead use a phrase like "Don't get offended, but...." then congratulations! Not only are you saying awful things that could seriously hurt someone, but you're now also gaslighting them, invalidating any upset you cause by being an utter prick, and making them feel trapped and nervous. Well done! That's an awful thing to do it, don't ever ever ever ever EVER do anything of this kind

And all of it, everything I've mentioned in this post...It's all so fucking normalised, everyone says this kind of shit every day even when it's blatantly obvious that it's angering, hurting and upsetting people. What is wrong with you people, what is wrong with this society,

#angry #racism #sexism #homophobia #transphobia #name every other -ism or -phobia you can think of really #why do people think this is ok #such fucking bullshit #don't normalise this kidn of behaviour! #It's very very very bad!

[feathersandstripes]

About Internet Arguments

Tumblr callout culture is toxic as we’ve all established at this point, but work is slow so I’m gonna talk about something I’ve been mulling over since yesterday.

I’d recommend going into my Otherkin tag if you wanna see the whole thing, but frankly it’s a lot of reading and I don’t expect anyone to strain themselves over an incredibly stupid issue.

Essentially though, I made some claims about how I felt about the Otherkin community. I never said I expected anyone to change their beliefs or even take their time to respond to me. I’m nothing important in these people’s lives; I’m just making a post of my thoughts on my blog.

A few folks tagged this girl who they said was mature, happy to answer questions, and well known within the Otherkin tumblr community.

One thing I noticed about this girl, before speaking to her, was that she listed herself as the “Undisputed Monarch of Otherkin Discourse” on her blog. That really told me all I needed to know about her, and her responses on my post and attitude towards me only cemented both the points I was making about the community as well furthering my own thoughts about how tumblr goes about disagreements.

Discourse is essentially a competition on here; whoever can yell the loudest wins? I honestly don’t remember the last time I was genuinely involved in any sort of discourse in this site- I’ve been here since I was 18 and I’m in a lot of marginalized communities; ranging from mental illnesses, to my gender, to my sexuality. It was maybe a year or two ago, when I was really protective of the asexual community and wanting to tear aphobes apart. But what I learned from those experiences is that nobody wants to listen, everyone wants to insert their opinions and be dramatic, and above all, it’s a show.

It’s about who can use the most popular buzzwords and who can make the cleverest line, and who can get the most notes. I grew out of that shit real fast because I learned there was a much healthier and effective way to go about disagreements.

Now obviously this doesn’t apply to the more harmful issues. Racism, sexism, and violent bigotry. It’s not a black and white issue at all.

But if people don’t like something about your identity just....let them. If ALL they’re doing is yelling into the void but still being respectful to that group they’re not a fan of, why do you need to stress yourself arguing with them?

The more time you spend outside of the internet (tumblr specifically) the more you learn that a lot of people aren’t going to understand nor agree with your world views. People in the workplace, people you meet waiting in line for a movie, people on the street. And that’s okay. No one will agree with 100% of what what you believe in and if they aren’t violent, that’s okay.

This girl- Miss. Monarch, you could tell she spends a LOT of time online which isn’t inherently a bad thing. When I’m not at work or out with my friends I’m pretty much filling the gaps with video games. I get that some people use the internet at their home.

But you can tell she made her identity about it. Arguing with me was VERY important to her because she needed to solidify this identity she made for herself. And unfortunately it’s not really up to par with how folks see her. Her main source of arguing was to quote things I said out of context, quote responses I made that weren’t directed at her, throw in buzzwords that often had no relevance in the actual argument, and attempt to pull receipts on an insulting post I reblogged in 2014 (completely skipping over a positive post I reblogged the next year).

She also was very quick to accuse all of my stories and claims as lying. One thing I said was that because I KNEW my feelings on the community weren’t kind, I went out of my way to research them over a time period of 3 years. I wanted to understand the concept of Otherkin as well as it’s community better. I also shared some posts I’ve seen that I found distasteful as well as stories Otherkin have told me that I found disturbing. This girl was very quick to accuse me of lying because according to her, if I had been in the community for as little as nine months I wouldn’t hold the same opinions. Despite her words if she had done a LITTLE bit of research in an attempt to understand my side of the story, she’d see that I reblogged an Otherkin positive post as early as 2015 when I sort of began to attempt to change my point of view. I’ve never been someone who hates blindly, I always do my research.

It was really the typical tumblr argument pattern and it was pretty predictable. I think I might’ve responded to her twice and both times I told her to block me- the first time she absolutely raged and resorted to name calling and all that fun stuff. It’s understandable I guess- by not engaging I insulted her identity.

I told her to block me again and while she didn’t respond, I can see in the notes that she’s keeping tabs on that post and reblogging whenever someone else responses, coincidentally leaving out my own responses that are calm and respectful.

I’m bringing all this up because she’s considered to be some sort of face of her community- it was only two people that mentioned her but I do think she has a rather large following based on the notes the post got; and it concerns me that she’s what people consider good discourse to look like.

I mean- all she really did was prove exactly what I said I disliked about the community. And I’m a larger picture, it’s what I dislike about tumblr as a whole.

People on this website need to just. Calm down and look at their own words objectively when arguing, and listen to the other side. Reading doesn’t equal listening you know?

#tumblr #callout culture #dhdjdjf i wont put this in the otherkin tags this time #that was actuallt p rude of me ngl #long post

[epic-and-kitty]

I'll be reopening asks a few days from now, but I think you all deserve an explanation

I'll be reopening asks, but anon and submissions will still be closed. But I think my followers deserve to know what happened, seeing as I didn't actually say much publicly as it was happening. Trigger warning for suicidal ideation, self hatred, aphobia and transphobia and for mentions of molestation and pedophilia It started when I made a throwaway vent/do not reblog post about something I saw when trying to find a user. It was about lgbta+ issues and wasn't even tagged other than my vent and personal tag along with the previously mentioned do not reblog. Someone reblogged it, screen shotted my description and "called out" my use of the word queer when in the phrase "queerplatonic partner" as me using a slur. I privated then eventually deleted the post and thought it was done with. A few days later, a friend of mine reblogged my coming out post with positivity and encouragement. They also used the word queer. And I think that's what started it. The next day my notes were flooded with exclusionists calling me a cishet or straightie, calling me a joke and calling me out for using the word queer. At this time, I had been put on antidepressants after being officially diagnosed. The doctor had said that the pills might cause severe suicidal ideation, and that's unfortunately what happened as I saw all these people who quite literally despised me. For most of the rest of that day, I was attempting to block every exclusionist and fight the constant urge to end my life. My paranoia increased and I kept imagining how these people would come to attack me in real life. It was hard, but with the help of friends, I was able to keep stable enough not to hurt myself. My qpp had to deal with people sending hate their way for defending me. In the end, I had to delete my coming out post for my mental health. I closed my ask box and submissions, even made it so only blogs who followed me could send me pms. Ever since then, I've had at least one suicidal thought a day. My self hatred slowly got worse. And then that stupid thing about defining trans people out of existence happened, and my suicidal thoughts got worse, because I was so scared for my qpp and was having trouble finding a reason to continue if everything would end up going to shit in the end. And I felt worse that my shit mental state meant I would have trouble being there for them without having a mental breakdown. And I feel like I can't turn to the people I care about, because their problems are so much bigger than mine. And I'm sure there are exclusionists just stalking my blog, looking for the tiniest thing to turn on me. Looking for my public breakdown post as a sign of victory against me, a way to prove that they won when I deleted and went radio silent and buried myself away from their disapproval. I get it, ok? You hate me, dispise the fact I even exist. I hope you're happy, having caused someone to go so far past ok that she contemplated, repeatedly, on how to end it all. I'm not perfect, but before you buried me in hatred I was honestly trying to improve. To be a better person and to improve my mental health. And now, because you people wouldn't leave me the FUCK alone, I'm wondering why I should. I hope you all enjoyed the laugh you had at my expense. It wasn't like i was recovering from telling my mother about the fact a super close family friend fucking MOLESTED me repeatedly as a teen, only for her to turn it on me like it was my fault in part that a man 4 times my age was allowed to touch me. Oh wait.... I was I hope you all enjoyed crushing what little pride and happiness I had in finally accept myself for who I was. I hope you're proud that you destroyed the slight happiness and hope I had when I thought my mental state was finally, for once in my life , going to be better. I get that you hate me. I get that you don't want me to exist. But could you, for once, keep you're hate inside your little shit show instead of dumping it on someone who is desperately trying to be a better human being? I get that this post will probably have to be deleted for mental health as well because you all have nothing better to do, but could you kindly keep it to yourselves for once? I would really fucking appreciate it. To my mutuals and followers who read this, thank you for your time and for your understanding. To the aphobic leeches crawling around trying to suck dry what little happiness I can scrounge up for myself, hope you get better soon.

#Kitty mumbles #Kitty vents #I'm done with all the shit

[colorisbyshe]

Going back to that anon and rereading what they’re saying... it now genuinely looks like they’re saying doctors offering treatments that affect libido, even as a side-effect, are aphobic?

Like, there are treatments for things that have NOTHING to do with sexuality that will... affect your asexuality.

“I can’t help you without doing this” is an actual reality lots of treatments face?

I was deep into what most of y’all would call ~grey-asexuality before I was on my hypothyroidism medication. Because hypothyroidism can tank your libido (and lots of other things--your metabolism, your mental health, etc).

There is no medication I can be given to treat my hypothyroidism that wouldn’t also affect my sex drive. My doctor, a woman who knew NOTHING about my sex drive, because the only reason she diagnosed me w/ hypothyroidism is because of my blood work not because of anything I said to her, could not prescribe me something that helped my hormone production but didn’t affect my sex drive.

She could not help me without prescribing something that “fixed” my libido as well. That’s not aphobia, that’s just the reality of medication and hormone production. I’m still largely disinterested in sex and romance but my sex drive has changed because... well...

That’s sort of just... how thyroids work.

So if you’re with a doctor and they’re saying, “Me offering you medication to help you with [insert disease, neurodivergence, disorder, whatever] is going to have some side effects, perhaps on your sex drive,” that’s not aphobia. That’s just... how medication works. And doctors are MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more likely to put you on a treatment that absolutely TANKS your sex drive and makes you disinterested/incapable of sex than they are medication that increases your sex drive.

Which is why “amount of sexual attraction/sex drive” can’t be a coherent identity. Gayness, transness doesn’t change on a daily dosage of levothyroxine or whatever the fuck you’re on.

But amount of sexual attraction/libido/desire, whatever the fuck? Can change with mood, medication, disorders, hungriness, energy levels, mental health, relationship status, how much you leave the house and see actual real people that you COULD be attracted (ie a hermit who only sees their parents is probably gonna experience sexual attraction a lot less than someone who leaves their house and sees other people), physical health, trauma, age, development, religious/personal beliefs/guilt/shame, and just about any other minutiae.

Claiming that lacking sexual attraction is pathologized without acknowledging that literally every single human being has periods of time where they’re not experiencing sexual attraction, even long periods of time (and I’m talking years here) where they don’t have any sexual desires or maybe only experience sexual desires in very specific contexts (ie only with their partners, only in certain places, etc) is just... ridiculous.

“Asexuality is pathologized because some treatments for unrelated things might affect someone’s level of sexual desire” just proves asexuality cannot be a coherent experience, identity, or orientation the way gayness or transness is. It doesn’t prove pathologization or oppression.

Asexuality can be a symptom of something larger. Lack of sexual desire can be a symptom. (Side-note: Y’all only ever conflate asexuality with a lack of sexual desire when it comes to earning oppression points, any other moment and you’re screaming about how aces can have sexual desires.) Gayness and transness are not symptoms. They’re considered mental illnesses because people hate gayness and transness, not because they’re actually associated with any disorders. Gayness and transness aren’t tacked on to physical or mental ailments and are treated as as side effect.

Gay people don’t get put on hypothyroid medication and come out straight. Ace people... get put on hypothyroid medication and can come out less ace.

All aces aren’t being targeted by medical treatment. It just so happens that... some people are ace because they have medical conditions. That’s not pathologization of asexuality, that’s pathologization of their medical conditions.

And there are aces who are ace all their life and it’s not related to any known physical/mental health issue and you know how institutions response to that? They say, “If you aren’t distressed about it, it’s none of my business. If you are distressed about it, we will offer you counseling so you can adapt to and accept it.”

That’s... it. Medical institutions are on your side lmao. In a way they STILL aren’t for gay and trans people, who are often refused proper treatment, neglected, or just straight up denied any access at all.

#ace discourse #hsdd

[todorokicourse-archive]

Yet Another Call Out Post on Nick

Since my call out post was completely ignored and Nick (@/shibe-outta-five) and his boyfriend’s (@/its-sonny-d) got over 50 Notes, I’d appreciate if you guys would not ignore this one! I’m going to be pointing out some of the things I did wrong and, of course, I am not in the right. If Nick Is reading this, I apologize for the horrible things I said to you. They weren’t right, of course. They were gross and uncalled for. I’ll get more into that part of this post, but before I start to dissect into it, I do not condone any harassment towards Nick or his boyfriend. Unfollow, block, just don’t send him any hate. Anyways! Into the pot. 

Clearing Some Things Up In Sonny and Nick’s Call Out 

Sonny’s first point (other than blah blah blah “IMM ((you could have called me zach, deku, or todoroki. you know my names)) is an aphobe) is this

I NEVER insulted Nick just because he was offended by me being aphobic, Sunny! I insulted the fucking asshole because he was calling me a girl, saying things that personally made ME feel dysphoric (too bad you won’t have a dick to shove in your boyfriends ass, we’ll get into the receipts once I’m done). Nick knows I have anger issues, I TOLD him and his response was for me to “LOL CALM DOWN BRO”. 

You fucking think, Sonny? He said racist and transphobic shit to me, but I guess that’s okay because he’s your uwu soft boyfwiend, huh? Also, I did apologize to Nick! It wasn’t as sincere as his was (sarcasm) but it was still a fucking apology. 

As I said earlier, this was in no way meant to make anyone feel dysphoric: but I’m not going to tell anyone what does and doesn’t make them feel dysphoric. It’s an expression. Wasn’t meant in a transphobic sense. 

“Provoke and bait me” 

Actually, Nick, you started this fucking shit after you began calling me shit because I didn’t want to cater to your abusive fucking boyfriend. If you’re gonna call me out, at least get the info right. All I did was tell you you can block my fucking blog instead of continue to look at it if you don’t like me being an “aphobe”.

The rest of the call out is justified, (Despite them bringing up past drama that involved someone who fucked with me and my boyfriend’s heads for very personal reasons but. Whatever) but again: I apologize

Things that I find really fucking ironic:

Nick is a fucking aphobe himself. There are posts (and dms between me and him. Discord’s new update fucked my shit up so I can’t get receipts, unfortunately) of him invalidating @/femmeagainstddlg ‘s trauma because they’re ace. Not a fan of them myself, but that’s not very nice :^) You inclusionists who are defending him remember jyushicourse? He deactivated (probably by his boyfriends whim) but here’s of him calling inclusionists idiots. 

Now the actual call out post:

Since Nick and His Boyfriend posted screenshots of what I SAID, I feel as though I should post what he said like I did before. Again, I tried my fucking best not to say horrible shit to him, but there’s only so much my mental health can take before I start spewing out hateful shit. It was rude, and I shouldn’t have said any of that horrible stuff. Again: I apologize. Nick continued (while I told him that he was horrible at insults and needed to pack a bit more punch and how I’m more popular than him) to say transphobic shit about me and my boyfriend and tell me to cut myself before finally I got angry. Here’s some racist, “Sideways for attention, longways for results” transphobic shit he said to me.

This is the transphobic shit that started the more heated argument. This is gross, keep my fucking boyfriend out of this. He has nothing at all to do with it. 

“Sideways for attention, longways for results!” yeah thanks Seth McFarlane.

More transphobia

Nick calling me a c*on, I made a post about this before: but just letting you guys know: the word coon comes from the term baracoons (a cage), where they used to place Africans, who were waiting to be sent to America to be slaves. Also assuming I don’t have enough money for therapy? How about when I told my mom I needed therapy she slapped me across the face with a belt and threw water in my face? Thanks for bringing up trauma, Nick! 

Then Nick threatened to call me out because I was calling him out (I would’ve kept it between the two of us, but no he had to go and call me a racial fucking slur) Also me in there because I also wasn’t in the right

Encouraging me to call him a racial slur for his call out (Thank god I could rationally think at the time, and I didn’t. Wouldn’t have either way but still)

Update: Forgot to add in that at some point (near when I got tired of Nick’s shit) I told him I was nonbinary, therefore him calling me a “girl” wasn’t as insulting as it would be to him. You know what his response was? “Yeah, but you’re still a fucking trans boy.” So he was PURPOSELY misgendering me just to trigger me, and pretty much saying “If you’re nonbinary, pick a fucking gender”. That’s truscum logic for you, friends! 

Anyways,

Again: Don’t send him or Sonny hate. Block ‘em, Ignore ‘em. Don’t let them follow you at all! I’m not expecting any apology from Nick for being transphobic and racist, and I’m not accepting on either. Don’t send them hate. Don’t do it. Feel free to reblog this. Thanks for reading! 

#jyushicourse #slusheez #shibe-out-of-five #call out #long post

[nycto-draggo]

https://hamsterboy3.tumblr.com/post/162993100292/ive-got-a-question-is-post-game-asgoriel

Actually @hamsterboy3​, send this to @safeundertale. The pussies over there blocked me, but I'm not done with this fucking tangent, and I don't actually have shit to do today.

So, mod "A relationship that isn’t built on mutual respect is an unhealthy one" chara! Tell me more about how Asgoriel is on a level with fontcest!

You know, the incest ship that 60% of this garbage fandom obsesses over!

The one that people will make up AUs just to add more 'content' to!

The one that the creator of Underswap left social media because of how badly it poisoned their own creation!

The one that basically turned Undertale to 2010s gaming as supernatural is to TV shows!

The one where Sans and Papyrus both are flanderized beyond belief just to appeal to 15 y/os' sexual fantasies!

The reason this fucking fandom gives no shits about the dozens of other unique characters in Undertale!

Yes, that's right! All of that is true [give or take on '60%']!

Now tell me more about how a ship encouraging an estranged couple making amends and getting back together [@nightnurse57​ will especially know my point here] is JUST AS BAD as incest, which plenty of poor children out there have been forced into and traumatized by in real life, to the point they have trust issues and trouble functioning at all in social situations?

How Asriel being able to see his parents put aside their past problems and get along again is as abhorrent as two flanderized, gary-stu versions of Sans- from different AUs where the rest of Undertale's characters may as well not exist- fucking eachother, conceiving and birthing a child, and having that child in a relationship with YET ANOTHER SANS LIKE THE ABOVE?

Oh, but y'know, I guess I'm wrong! fontcest is actually fine compared to asgoriel! How dare a husband and wife that aren't even legally divorced make up after a fight? [Just kidding, all the above points are right, and you're fucking stupid. How dare you step on the hands of people trying to have some wishful thinking.]

So, moving on from that; Mod "non canon gay ships are kinky and sinful?" sans!

You seem to be pretty fired up about defending flanderization, mister "asexuality is not a sexuality" aphobic smear on the reputation of otherkin. So tell me-

Just how rare is it to find "fan x celebrity" on pornhub? Hmm? In a COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE, what's the underlying theme of Papyrus x Mettaton?

How about "employee x boss' ex-wife"? After all, that's what Sans and Toriel are to eachother. Not lovers, just two people that get together now and then to talk about puns. Sans doesn't even tell her about himself beyond Papyrus, nor does the reverse happen when you consider he doesn't know who she really is until meeting her in person. If we're going to put an accurate analogy to this, it's an online 'relationship' where neither party actually talks about themself, just events in their lives. That lack of trust doesn't go very far in real life, let me tell you. I've seen plenty of examples.

Oh yeah, and the fact Sans canonically sees Toriel as an 'old lady'. Real surprising how much of this fandom is into cougar chasers!

Side note: "What Im Saying Is The Game Doesnt Ever Mention They Had Sex". That's kind of, like, fucking retarded [No, I mean the actual slow-to-process-information definition] to say. If Asgore and Toriel have a canonical, biological child, they had their kind's equivalent of sex. End of discussion. That is how biology works.

But I'll be honest here: I skimmed through information about your blog. You cherry-pick ships that the fandom swoons over and aren't straight up illegal, you support aphobia [also fuck you for that, that's gross], and your piddly counterarguments are so fucking stupid that when someone like me comes along, all you can do is block me, effectively running away from the debate entirely. Clearly you'd be perfect politicians by today's standards.

So, unlike @hamsterboy3 said,

I do not agree with your blog as a concept.

Yes, pedophilia shouldn't exist, but you're fucking liars about being against character erasure, as you support content that is nothing but it.

I have been banned from sites and games before simply for speaking my mind, and honestly? I do not give a shit, because I actually have the balls to call out idiocy like yours with no filter added.

I do not support you guys, and hating on Asgoriel when you support the likes of papyton and soriel is absolutely disgusting.

ABSOLUTELY SEE THIS AS HATE TOWARDS YOU *THINGS*.

I, too, am simply trying to educate- in the way a parent will physically discipline a child that has done something going drastically against the rules they've outlined.

If you have any questions or wish to say something, then oops, you cowards already blocked me.

#long post #apologies to my actual decent followers- I'm not putting this under a readmore. #//rant #rant #Undertale discourse