lounges across a chair with a cup of tea. you know, i could do a little bit of aroblogging. for old time's sake. for new time's sake? 'cause there's a thought i've been rotating for a bit, something i've been wanting to knit into a piece of poetry - maybe some day, just not today. it's something i've not seen discussed very much, or at all, really - probably because i haven't been looking in the right spaces, or looking at all. probably because it's going to make me sound kind of pretentious or arrogant, but i'm used to that, so:
it's just - the strangeness of being an aroace person people keep falling in love with. i think "kind of person people keep falling in love with" is just something that happens if you're a person who's comfortable with yourself, or when you have a lot of interpersonal relationships, or if you just share much of yourself with other people. just, having contact with people around you in some way. feelings happen when they have the opportunity to grow! i don't know how it works! but i've been that person, at least a little bit, you know? it kind of happened as i grew older and grew into myself. it was very confusing, too, because like okay, i like myself, but i'm not necessarily expecing others to like me, it's great when they do but i wasn't banking on it! what!!!!
it's very sweet and all but it also means - facing the conundrum: do i Want this, or do i just Want to Want it, or am i just Curious about what it would mean to Have it? i've Tried, and i still don't know. personally, i'm glad for having tried, because otherwise i'd be asking myself for the rest of my life what it would be like to Try, and that's a me thing. i'm not immune to the yearning! you'd think being aroace would make you immune to the Yearning. i want my money back?
it also means - that no, i'm not aroace "because i can't get some," i promise, but it's not an argument i should have to make in the first place. it's such a strange spiral of an accusation, because in the world i live in there's nothing shameful about being single or a virgin regardless of orientation. to me it's a relief to not have to have sex with another person, but apparently i live in a society and in that society that's such a fundamentally alien notion i'm impossible to relate to. sorry about that.
it also means - i have to be the person who rejects people, and there's always so many stories about being the person who gets rejected, and there's mountains of sad songs and sympathy for being the Rejected One, the Lonely One, and of course, learning to handle rejection with grace is an important, painful thing. never got many saturday morning cartoon lessons in how to reject, though. not just in romantic pursuits, but in general. always running the treadmill of the scarcity mindset and You Must Never Hurt Anyone For Good Reason and there i was, crying my eyes out at my childhood friend's trampoline in the sunset telling him i'm sorry i can't love him back that way, and there i am, replying to the kindest social media DMs with i'm sorry i can't be your friend but it's not something i can force - i know it hurts, and who would we be if it didn't hurt, and if i didn't hurt you i would have to be the one to carry the pain. it's hard to make relatable, i guess?
always the fucking relatability! i know a lot of people can't Relate. because we're young and lonely and yearning and starved, because we're social animals, even if we're fiercely independent or enjoy the solitude. not to make assumptions! i know we're all different and want different things from life! but there's not a lot of frameworks for how to fill our cups when every beverage we're offered is the wrong flavor. i know coke makes my teeth feel weird but there's so, so many commercials for it, and it looks tasty in all of them, and i haven't had a drink in forever, how do i not crave it? i'll still show up to the party asking for a water and everyone is gonna give me the weird looks. am i sure? am i sure? i'm tired of feeling like a wrecking ball, i say. uhhh okay idk what that is about, they'll say, but water? that's a little boring, isn't it? we have so much soda, though. there's coke, coke, and vanilla coke.
just tap water, please and thank you. hope i don't ruin your party.
126 notes
·
View notes
Symbiot3 for the ask game!
I don't ship it. :/
...
....just kidding! I absolutely ship it. Everyone knows I ship it. If you didn't know, congrats! Now you know! Ahem, thank you for indulging me, my friend.
What made you ship it?
The funny answer is "spite". Back in, oh I don't know, maybe January of 2018, @amaronith and I were complaining about Venom Inc. and That Scene™ in the Alpha issue like "haha what if Eddie and Flash just got together instead of fighting. seems like the only way they can solve this".
(Venom Inc: Alpha #1; Slott, Costa, Stegman. they are SO dumb.)
The real answer is that AFTER we made that joke I started thinking about it and I was like "oh shit they actually have a lot in common and the Venom Symbiote is obviously in love with both of them... holy shit this might actually be a good ship. hot damn."
The ship is still largely out of spite for Venom Inc, but it's grown into so much more than that. I really like digging into all the characters and their respective relationships with each other and how it can all lead up to the three of them finding what makes it work.
What are your favorite things about the ship?
HMMM. Well. There was this moment from the Savage Six arc in Remender's run on Agent Venom...
...mostly because this is, at least to me, the first time we see Eddie address Venom with some like... modicum of the love he felt for the symbiote once upon a time. Like for a brief second there, he believes that maybe there's a part of the symbiote, regardless of who it's with, that has just saved him. And he's stunned. It's glorious.
There's also the glorious tension-filled Hallway Scene in Cullen Bunn's half of that same Venom volume, and I know that this one is precisely from #35:
I know that technically Eddie is Toxin here but MAN this scene was insane for that. Like. Holy shit.
Aaaand despite all my gripes about it, I have to hand this one to Donny Cates and Iban Coello. It's absolutely gorgeous. I'm pretty much internally screaming every time I see these panels. I don't really like the writing in this scene, I don't feel it's very indicative of what I think Eddie and Flash's relationship up to this point should be, buuuuuuut it's very sweet and very tender. I think they should kiiiiiiiss.
Overall I think there's just SO much potential to explore all they have in common, between complicated family relationships and complicated romantic relationships and both having grown up Catholic and their really different connections to Spider-Man, there is SO. MUCH. And the symbiote knows them, and it knows their hearts, and while I think if forced to choose between them it ultimately would.. but I would rather it not have to.
Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
I do find this kind of a funny question because I know there are people who think that this ship existing at all is an "unpopular opinion" in and of itself. But I don't think there's any real grounds to the idea that the symbiote isn't willing to share its host with another lover - especially if that other party is willing to accept symbiote+host as a package deal. I think it would be very normal for any bonded pair, for the human side to still desire a relationship with another humanoid.
There's this... particular way that Eddie isolates himself after a certain point in comics, right around the mid-90s when he leaves San Francisco I think, that really bothers me. Do I think he needs a romantic relationship outside the symbiote to have a happy and fulfilling life? Certainly not. But I also don't think it's going to be detrimental to him or his bond with the symbiote.
I guess the only other "unpopular opinion" I might have is that by making Eddie hold hands with Flash I would also expect him to get drawn into Flash's social circle. Flash is at his core a Spider-Man character and especially my more recent fics I like to lean into that. Some people don't like the idea of Venom being closer to the Spidey cast, but the truth is that I think their best stories are when we remember that Eddie and Flash are really very ordinary guys.
And they are both in love with a space alien. (And each other.)
23 notes
·
View notes