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arielmagicesi · 2 years

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started rewatching She Ra because I was thinking of getting back into writing Scorfuma fic, but I just cried way too much at that episode where Catra and Adora see all their childhood memories in the weird palace hologram place, and yeah I might need to stop rewatching this show cause oof that hurts

gonna put the rest of this rant under a readmore since I veered way off of talking about She Ra and into personal shit that involves Sex Things Not Appropriate For All Eyes or whatever

also my depression is pretty shitty right now for the last... while... and I wish I had my student teaching placement... I wish I had distractions from my sexual frustration and the constant remembering of what happened with my ex and my bullies in high school which, in addition to time/money/energy constraints, is the reason why I can’t SOLVE that sexual frustration by “just hooking up with whoever”, because it’s terrifying, and too much of a risk, and might lead to me bursting into tears, and I don’t have enough of any experience or any of positive experience to make me at all confident, and I wish I didn’t WANT so bad to be with a woman because then it would not bother me. besides the societal pressures, which like... yeah, fuck societal pressures, whatever. but I also have to get rid of the shame I have around having sexual desires.

getting rid of the shame + trying to be confident + gaining more dating experiences that are positive ever??? + maybe getting some proof that somebody COULD desire me??? proof that I believe anyway, which actually that might be too big of an ask, I’m incapable of suspending my disbelief like that + getting my fucking student teaching placement so I don’t have time to think about this + since that’s not happening apparently, finding other jobs and things to fill my day + not rewatching things that make me cry + I still need to engage with things that make me feel the vulnerable things I avoid, I need to get used to seeing things that reflect the parts of myself I’m scared of + being able to even IMAGINE that someone could ever want me for real and not be lying + having an experience where I express sexual desires and I am not told that it’s creepy and toxic and problematic + constantly reminding myself of what I call Bunchian theory, which is to say, romantic relationships are not the be-all of existence and having a normative relationship is not a requirement for being allowed to exist or whatever + idk getting a vibrator or something? would that satiate my clit long enough to let me focus on things other than “when girl kiss please” + finding joy and fulfillment outside of sex and outside of interpersonal relationships so that I have things in my life that make me happy, like cooking good food and seeing interesting places and reading good books and helping others and learning new things + nurturing the good, nonsexual nonromantic relationships I already have + practicing socializing and finding queer community wherever I can in this godforsaken state sitting right next to New York City and if I have to drive to Newark or wherever the fuck to go to some community center then so be it......

anyway. I FEEL very alone in these struggles but I KNOW that I’m not the only person on earth going through this. even cool hot sexy people with positive sex memories instead of just bad ones, are also alienated and isolated in ways after COVID and social media brainrot and whatever. so. I may be alone but I’m not alone. my therapist today basically was like “Ariel ffs you keep saying you want to date people but then you don’t want to do anything that would lead to a date, and then whenever anyone presents you an opportunity you get too scared and turn it down” and yeah that’s basically it. at this point I’ve had one or two people flirt with me on dating apps, and my internal reaction is always “what the fuck are you trying to do. what do you want. I’m not giving you money. leave me alone” so... yeah. Idk. I’m still deeply ashamed of being too sexual/horny and being too dumbly obsessed with romance, which is funny because I’m like mid-tier horny when compared to the rest of humanity, and I’m if anything below-average with regards to romance obsession (outside of obsessing in a negative way), but it’s like, I feel like I’m too weird/freakish to be allowed ANY sex/romance thoughts.

feel free to reply if you have thoughts. no pressure, I just... needed to vent all this and feel less crazy

#written by me

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mistypluie · 3 years

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blue and pink and i mean that in the most platonic way possible asjdkhfjdhf

awwww <3 we shall have a summer friend wedding :) <3

#i get u i get u...might have to frickin go off about this in the tags #where is the respect for nonromantic and nonsexual relationships where is it why cant we appreciate friendships #yeah im guilting of this but why does everything have to be romantic cant ppl be friends??? the closest and most important relationships ive #ever had have been friendships!! theres nothing inherently better about romance than friendship fight me about this (maybe im biased cuz im #ace but even if i wasnt. sure sex is fun but have u tried having friends????)#anyway. anyway what i am saying is why try to read romance into everything its so awful being friends with other wlw and having to #specify that everything affectionate u do or say u mean in a platonic way!! like maybe this is whats behind wlw feeling like theyre being #predatory even tho theyre not????#that fear that u being friendly will be read as an unwanted advance????#let ppl be friends!!!!!!! and let them be affectionate w their friends without it having to be romancey!!!! let me joke about marrying my #friends pls i am begging.... on that note honestly i would marry a friend. id get married in a friend way i need that kinda stability in #my life.. a life partner whos my best friend?? that sounds sick man sign me up #but i digress. the POINT is that friendships r valid and not everything has to be romantic and we as a society should stop reading romance #into everything bc im salty that every time i try to be extra nice to my wlw friends i have to specify i don't mean it romantically #let me tell my wlw friends i love them in a platonic way pls!!!!!#******guilty #im not goin back and typing all that yall can live with my typos #and ofc all this coexists with gender roles where women are allowed to be much more physically affectionate w friends so often its #impossible to tell whether someone is romantically interested or just being friendly.... lots of layers to this one #the point is im love my friends and i wanna tell them that without it being read romantically. that's the point #ask #misty.txt

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novaliae · 3 years

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hey mcytblr (and by mcytblr i mean my two followers who like mcyt), let’s talk about aphobia

recently aphobia has been rearing its ugly head on mcyttwt and elsewhere in the fandom. it started with this clip of phil responding to a dono about whether he’s okay with fans headcanoning c!phil and c!techno as a qpr (queerplatonic relationship). transcript of the clip:

dono: are you okay with people portraying you and techno’s characters as qprs? qprs are platonic life partners. it’s an argument in the fandom.

phil, over the last sentence of the dono: i don’t give a shit. i—i just don’t give a shit. it’s headcanons; it’s not real.

(it’s my first time doing transcripts of things so i hope i did it right)

unfortunately, this led to problematic shippers claiming their romantic headcanons or fancontent was actually a qpr. the most blatant include a tweet from a t*chza artist depicting phil and techno kissing with the caption “besties” and replies full of people mocking qprs (ie qrting the art and adding “i love queerplatonic relationships”). the implications, of course, are that people who hc c!phil and c!techno or any other duo in a qpr are just closet problematic shippers, and that qprs don’t exist by extension. and naturally, twitter being twitter, this has spiraled into a whole lot of “aphobia doesn’t exist” and “aces/aros aren’t oppressed” and a bunch of other all-around nastiness/anti-ace sentiment.

let’s unpack this.

first of all, what is aphobia, and what are qprs? if you haven’t heard of it before, aphobia is the discrimination against or invalidation of people on the aromantic or asexual spectrums. people on these spectrums do not experience romantic/physical attraction or may only do so only in certain circumstances. this means that aspec people often do not end up in a “traditional” romantic partnership, especially if they identify as aroace (both aromantic and asexual; aroaces experience little to no sexual and romantic attraction). aspec people will sometimes instead be in a queerplatonic relationship. a queerplatonic partner, or qpp, is most often described as a platonic soulmate/platonic life partner, and is someone with whom you form an intense emotional bond (something beyond traditional friendship) that is inherently nonsexual and nonromantic. the most common dsmp fandom interpretations of queerplatonic relationships are c!beeduo, who are platonically married in canon, and c!emeraldduo, who are the subject of the dono phil received.

ace and aro people are constantly invalidated and forced to justify their ace/aro-ness. we hear all the time that being aspec isn’t really a thing or that we’re confused and don’t know what we actually feel. by implicitly stating that qprs are not legitimate or that they’re romantic relationships in disguise, aphobes a) imply that ace or aro people with queerplatonic partners are actually in a romantic relationship but won’t label it like that because of stubbornness/stupidity/lack of understanding, and b) push the notion that deep and lasting connections cannot exist beyond romantic/sexual partnerships. which. is absolute bullshit and blatant aphobia.

cuddling, holding hands, and kissing on the cheek/forehead (behaviors often part of queerplatonic relationships) are not inherently sexual/romantic. let me say this again for the aphobes in the back. cuddling, holding hands, and kissing on the cheek/forehead are not inherently sexual/romantic behaviors. they are things that sexual/romantic couples may do, but they can also be integral parts of relationships that aren’t based around that sort of thing, like friends and families and yes, queerplatonic partnerships. when fans create art of qpps holding hands or fics where they cuddle and bump foreheads, they are not meant to be interpreted as shipping. i know i’ve said these words so much they’ve stop sounding like actual things, but implying otherwise is amatonormative and is aphobic.

by writing off all queerplatonic partnerships as shipping, or hell, even close platonic ones that aren’t explicitly labeled as queerplatonic, you are erasing a massive facet of the ace community while continuing to conform to an incredibly rigid and liner mindset about what attraction is/isn’t. nothing is more invalidating to an ace or aro person than claiming something they do is sexual/romantic when it clearly isn’t meant to be interpreted that way. we have made it clear that what we feel (or don’t feel), and you are blatantly ignoring that. you are repeating the same old tired stereotype that aspec people do not really exist and we’re only confused or too afraid to confront our “actual sexualities.” stop sexualizing queerplatonic relationships or turning them into something they’re not. qprs are not the next “just gals being pals,” they’re just aspec people trying to exist and sick of having to constantly justify their existence.

i could do a whole other post about exclusionist arguments i saw in some of the tweet’s replies like “aspec people aren’t really oppressed” and “aphobia doesn’t exist,” and maybe i will later on, but this is primarily about the general mockery made of qprs on twitter.

stop belittling ace people. stop mocking qprs. i am sick and tired of the aphobia/amatonormativity in this fandom. let’s be better than this.

please reblog and raise awareness!

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addictedtostorytelling · 2 years

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I was just rewatching some of season 7 of CSI and wondered about an inconsistency with GSR in "Living Doll."Grissom showed public affection towards Sara and that's how Natalie was able to target Sara. That display of affection to gently touch her arm - in public with so many people watching - is a bit uncharacteristic no? I of course enjoyed seeing Grissom providing physical contact to Sara that affirms his love for her.

hi, anon!

so while i do think that that kind of public touching represents a development in grissom and sara's relationship at that point, i don't think it's necessarily out of character for them. to me, it makes sense in context.

the thing is that even prior to this point, grissom and sara do on occasion touch each other affectionately at work, “secret dating” situation notwithstanding, such as in episode 06x24 "way to go" when sara puts her hand on grissom's shoulder to comfort him in his office or in episode 07x18 "empty eyes" when grissom wipes away sara's tears in the tv room after they watch the broadcast—it's just that they typically follow certain rules when they do so.

generally speaking, their rules for physical touch at work are:

the touches must be inherently nonsexual and nonromantic (i.e., no kissing, no romantic caressing, no contact—even fully clothed—in the traditional “bathing suit” areas, etc.);

the touches should, for the most part, seem incidental even if in actuality they are very purposeful;

the touches should, for the most part, be passing and not linger long;

no touching of faces (as while doing so is not inherently sexual or romantic, it is intimate beyond what their supervisor-subordinate relationship “should be”);

no touching in ways that would cause onlookers to question the “appropriateness” of their supervisor-subordinate relationship.

overall, the idea is not that they never touch each other whatsoever—because, lbr, even before they start dating, they are incapable of actually keeping their hands off of each other for any extended period of time—but rather that what touches they do engage in not be full-on incriminating; i.e., that no one would be able to look at them and say, "for sure, this touch indicates that grissom and sara are a couple and/or in love with each other and/or fucking."

it's all about plausible deniability, you know?

of course, as noted in the post linked above, the rules listed here do become somewhat more lax when they are alone together on scenes.

they also are ones that grissom and sara get increasingly worse at adhering to as time goes on, and particularly by latter half of s7.

as i talk about in this post,

by the end of s7, both grissom and sara are growing increasingly restless with the status quo, and grissom in particular is becoming less and less cautious about keeping their secret.

for example, there are a few times throughout the season when grissom rather recklessly expresses affection for sara in plain view and/or within earshot of their team members (see here and here), not being at all discreet.

he also doesn’t do a very good job of hiding the fact that he is no longer living his old “bachelor hermit lifestyle,” to the point where some of his coworkers even suspect that he maybe has a girlfriend, though of course they don’t yet know that his girlfriend is sara.

note: based on the case file for the weller car crash that we see greg holding in episode 07x24 "living doll," we know that grissom and sara work this case on 04.04.07 within the universe of the show, which means that this event takes place between episode 07x18 “empty eyes” (03.29.07) and episode 07x19 “big shots” (04.05.07 to 04.08.07), canonically speaking. particularly given that this case takes place just one week after the events of episode 07x18 "empty eyes," grissom may be feeling fairly protective of sara and may be acting in a particularly physically affectionate manner with her because he knows she's still reeling from what happened in that case.

so.

when looking at the arm touch that natalie davis observes in this situation, in some ways, it is very much in keeping with grissom and sara's rules for affectionate touching in public—in that it is not inherently sexual/romantic in nature, it does seem incidental (as grissom is ostensibly "just" lifting the camera strap up off of sara's arm so he can take the camera from her); it doesn't linger; it isn't on the face; and it could very easily be ignored by onlookers, particularly given that most of the onlookers on this scene are civilians who would be much more interested in the car wreck than in the people documenting it; etc.

in those senses, what they do is very much "allowed."

however.

admittedly, this touch does also in some ways "straddle the line," which is where that part about them getting increasingly worse at being discreet about their relationship over time comes in.

while not inherently sexual/romantic in nature, this arm touch is a bit more familiar than a touch between a supervisor and subordinate (or even just two coworkers) might typically be, and while it could seem incidental, it also might on second glance be recognizable as purposeful.

the way grissom and sara seem to justify it is that it's not done with any coworkers around to observe—just, as they suppose, ignorant bystanders.

of course, they're not counting on the hyper-vigilant serial killer who is stalking grissom being in the crowd.

since it's not like they're kissing or grabbing each other's faces to stare longingly into each other's eyes or anything as obviously romantic as that, they figure they're fine.

there's no one else from the lab around to see them, and most of the folks in the crowd are engrossed in the grisly wreckage in front of them, not on a relatively quick touch between two of the investigators working the scene.

still.

it's definitely a more indulgent touch than grissom and sara might have allowed themselves in the past. it's also indicative of some general incaution on their parts throughout s7, where they seem to forget that even folks who don't have badges can potentially recognize pda when they see it.

in the past—like during s5 and s6—i don't know that they would have gone as far as they do here unless they were entirely alone on a scene, but by this point they seem to be kind of in this mode of assuming that they are invisible to anyone who isn't a cop or a criminalist.

as discussed above, in this case, their casualness may be due to some of the recent happenings in their lives—to the fact that, post-sabbatical, grissom is feeling more and more inclined to just throw caution to the wind and follow his heart where sara is concerned; and/or that sara is still a bit shaky after the events of the david marlon/"marlon frost" case, and so grissom instinctively offers her touches of reassurance; etc.

it may also be due to how, by now, they've been together long enough that outside of the lab, they're very much in the habit of being coupley pretty much all of the time, so on a regular city street like the one they're on here, in the absence of any of their coworkers, they very naturally drop their inhibitions and forget that they have an audience (particularly as, as discussed above, that audience is pretty much entirely a civilian one*).

* of course, here is one area where if we think too hard, our suspension of disbelief breaks, as even though i don't think that we as viewers are meant to suppose that there are any other csis on scene at the weller crash than grissom and sara, the crime scene photos from that case that we see in episode 07x24 "living doll" very much suggest the presence of at least one other csi (as both grissom and sara appear in the photos together as a two-shot, meaning that said photos couldn’t have been taken by either one of them). it's one of those "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" moments, for sure.

so.

i think that had natalie davis not been in that crowd, all of grissom and sara's assumptions about the innocuity of their touching would have been correct; probably no one would have even noticed his hand briefly on her arm, much less assumed that it meant that they were lovers even if they did notice. the fact that they were more or less adhering to their old rules would have protected them from scrutiny.

natalie davis is just on a whole other level.

not only is she at that crime scene specifically for the purpose of observing grissom, but her almost superhuman powers of perception allow her to understand grissom and sara's body language for what it is right away.

anyone else likely would not have thought much of that touch—honestly, it might be very easy to construe that interaction as grissom taking the camera and then giving sara an extra touch to acknowledge that he was in her space, reading nothing particularly romantic into it at all (and particularly if one has no prior knowledge of gsr or of grissom and sara as people)—but she's studied both human interaction in general and grissom specifically enough to pick up what is being communicated there.

anyway.

all of this is to say that while grissom touching sara's arm in public is different from how they would have comported themselves in s5/s6, i don't actually think it's an "inconsistency" as of s7, as, a) it's something we do on occasion see them do (i.e., trade touches in public as long as there's no other law enforcement officials around, even if there are civilians), and b) they have, by that point, begun to be somewhat less cautious with their pda just in general.

like.

it's part of a progression we see with them, where they slowly become less careful the longer they're together.

which is why i think that even had they not ended up "coming out" at the end of s7 because sara was kidnapped, they probably wouldn't have managed to keep their relationship a secret for too much longer anyway. those kids wanted to get married, and they both knew that they couldn't do so for as long as they had to remain on the dl, so subconsciously they almost kind of wanted to get caught, just so they could give up the ruse and follow their hearts. it was inevitable that at some point they would have finally crossed a line.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #anon #asks: csi #**#my meta #meta: csi #meta: gsr #season seven #07x24 #csi #gsr #let's talk shop #csiverse

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voidcataro · 4 years

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I’d like to take a minute to appreciate aromantic diversity

Every single aromantic person's experience is different. Every single aromantic person has a different constellation of reasons they took up the label, a different journey to finding it. I think it's important to remember that, while our community as it exists today began with clusters of lonely, alienated people finding strength in their similarities, we have just as much strength in our diversity.

Our community has grown beyond a group of people with common exeriences to become a group of people with vastly varied experiences but a common need not to be constrained by social convention in the form and frequency of our relationships. That's rad as hell.

So here's to the many forms that takes:

aros who want romance on their own, convention-defying terms

aros who want no romance at all, ever

aros who want friendships as their primary relationships, who want their friends to be their roommates for life, who maybe even want to co-parent with their friends

aros who want nonromantic sexual relationships

aros who want nonromantic, nonsexual relationships

aros who want intimacy that defies existing categories

aros who want no intimacy at all, thank you very much

aros who want romance sometimes, maybe, it honestly depends

aros who want romantic relationships in theory but can't stand them in practice

aros who want to call themselves aro but aren't sure why yet, and maybe they never will be

aros who want multiple intimate relationships of some kind and identify as polyamorous or polyaffectionate or poly-something else

and all the rest of us. There are so many others. Represent yourself in a reblog or reply if you want!

And here's to the beauty of a community that unites such diversity in mutual support and respect. We are so powerful together.

#aromantic #aro positivity #aro diversity #aromantic positivity #my words

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asmoiras-tells · 3 years

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OK... so I’ve been struggling with my sexuality a lot throughout my adolescence years. I always felt some kind of attraction towards people, I’ve had pleeenty of those so-called platonic crushes over the years, but since most of those crushes I needed to hide from my family/friends/etc. and suppress from my own self because I knew that having some kind of attraction on someone that wasn’t under the cishet-male characteristics would had been another problem I didn’t want to deal with; I mean, my middle/high school years were hard enough while I was faking being cishet, so I knew for certain me expressing myself was only going to make it even harder. —I’d wished I did things different back then, but I had such internalized fear of being treated with “caution” and distaste, that I thought it was better for me to blend in. That’s why, for years, I swore it was just my closeted bisexuality the one that kept me from having a romantic/sexual relationship. That me being in the closet was the reason why I couldn't see myself in any sexual nor romantic scenario.

It wasn’t until a year ago or so that I finally had the courage to “step out” of the closet and came out as bisexual to my sister (who told me she suspected it for a while), and don’t get me wrong, it felt incredibly liberating, but somehow... I noticed I still wasn’t feeling any stronger attraction towards others. I mean, I would feel aesthetically, platonically attracted to people, and even fantasize about them or slightly get aroused at some points, but never to the extent of having the innate desire or attraction to actually pursue doing anything with them; I was more than fine by just looking at them or having them in my life.— Just like I’ve always felt, so “maybe,” I thought, “maybe, I came defective on that matter or,” I doubted, “what if I’m just faking it, confused, trying to seek some attention, just like most people told me I was doing so.”

I talked about this with the people I trust the most, and while my best friend swore I was indeed aroace, my mother told me it was only my lack of any experience in the subject , “you’ll change your mind once you fall in love.” Note: I was in a relationship at that time which ended after a couple of months because, even though they were perfect and I indeed liked them, I wasn’t feeling like everyone says it supposed to and felt like I was being unfair with them and their feelings. I couldn’t help but think something was wrong with me, but after doing a bit of research and a while of introspection, I came across with the bi-aroace community, and I finally found where I fully stand. I wasn’t the only one feeling that way, I wasn’t “broken.” It made me feel relieved, confident, so-like-myself; I don’t have the exact words to express it... it’s just great!!

I tried to find an official bi-aroace flag, but there’s none yet... so I wanted to propose(?) one which we, bi-aroaces, could show our pride with. It’s inspired by the general oriented aroace flag made by @biaroace and the proposed bi-aroace flag by @queer-coloured-glasses.

Meaning of the colours:

BLUE (#161639): I used the same hex colour code as @biaroace for our aroace-ness.

GREY (#5e5360): I decided to go for a mix of the greens [#a8d478 and #3aa63f] used in the aromantic flag and the purple [#810081] used in the asexual flag to show our affiliation with the wider aro-spec and ace-spec communities, including the aroaceflux spectrum (like mine.)

PURPLE (#9b4f96): I used the same hex colour code as in the bisexual flag for our attraction to both similar and different genders, a.k.a. our bi-ness.

WHITE: I decided to keep it instead of replacing it for the “bi-purple” to represent our wholeness and allosexual partners/allies.

TEAL GREEN (#36aea0): I kept this one the same colour code as in @biroace and @queer-coloured-glasses flags for our nonromantic/nonsexual attraction, like platonic, aesthetic, sensual, alterous, attachment, squish, queerplatonic, etc.— and nope, it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it’s my second favorite color nor that it fits perfectly LOL

Gosh, now that I re-read this post, I kinda vented a lot on this one. I apologize if it’s a lot to read, I wasn’t expecting it to be that long. Sorry about that 7n7r

Anyhoo... what do you guys think?

#bi-aroace #aroace #asexual pride #aromantic #bi #lgbt pride #asexual #aro #ace #ace pride #pride flag #aro pride #aroace pride #aroace positivity #bi-aroace problems #bi pride #bi-aroace pride

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idyllic-affections · 9 months

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PLATONIC LIFE PARTNERS. THATS BASICALLY WHAT BAIZHU AND CHILDHOOD FRIEND!READER ARE

#aphelion speaks 🌸#I THOUGHT OF THEM LIKE SIBLINGS FIRST BUT THIS IS INDEFINITELY MORE ACCURATE #THATS SO THEM REAL AND TRUE #aromantic!baizhu and aromantic!childhood friend!reader maybe..... omg #wait omg.#god thats so real of them!!!!! aro baizhu and his aro childhood friend who are platonic life partners #“fairytale romance” def wouldnt happen for baizhu OR childhood friend!reader #it just wouldnt happen to either of them. its not realistic for either of them.#so i very much like the idea of them thinking of one another as partners #just in a nonromantic nonsexual way #this post is for aroace spec people <33

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askanaroace · 4 years

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Would an aroflux asexual biromantic be considered oriented aroace?

To be honest, I’m not sure I can give a super clear answer on this at the moment because I think there’s still a lot going on with the definition of oriented aroace (and the fact that the coiner meant for it to be exclusionary and specifically anti-graya regardless of the fact that a lot of aspec folk found the term helpful and connected with it), and I don’t know how much agreement there has been on what oriented aroace is really meant as.

From my understanding, “oriented aroace” is meant to signify that the other attraction term you’re using (gay, bi, lesbian, etc.) is meant in a nonromantic and nonsexual way (such as platonic, alterous, sensual, etc.). However, anytime someone asks me if they can be aroace and still identify with gay/bi/lesbian/pan/ply/hetero/etc. because they want to be in that sort of relationship somehow (including in a romantic/sexual manner), I get commentors mentioning “that’s oriented aroace!” on my post.

I’m honestly not sure if this is just a misunderstanding or if oriented aroace has evolved to denote any aroace person marking any form of attraction/relationship desire. Because I’ve also seen people saying that if aspec people are identifying as oriented aroace, then they may be using the term to denote their nonzero romantic/sexual attraction.

Anybody who identifies as oriented aroace want to pitch in on how they define oriented aroace and/or what it means to them personally? Please note exclusionary anti-graya and anti-aspec rhetoric will not be tolerated nor accepted. I’m also gonna go ahead and tag @shades-of-grayro here since they’ve been fairly active in the ongoing debate and evolution of this term and might be able to help with some input?

Finally, I am going to provide an answer in that I’m going to turn the question back on you. Do you find the term oriented aroace useful to you? Do you want to use the label? (And maybe think a little about why.) Then maybe you do fall under the term oriented aroace if it’s something you find helpful.

#identity #labels #oriented aroace #aro #ace #aromantic #asexual #aro spectrum #ask #op #Anonymous

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halfgclden · 4 years

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CLEAR CACHE | PARKER

“Okay, yeah. I’ll call you soon, it’s nice hearing your voice.”

Parker tossed the phone onto his bed as he hung up, then flopped down beside it, covering his face with his hands.

Google Search: How to get over an ex

Google Search: How to tell someone you still love them without it being weird

Google Search: Does absence really make the heart grow fonder?

Delete History.

It was a short call. Normally he and Amber would video call, but the connection was bad and Parker wasn’t exactly in the mood to look like he wasn’t stressed. He could tell that she was smiling though, from her voice. When he hinted that she should be expecting a package soon, she ocellated between telling him to tell her what it was and telling him not to so that it would be a surprise. He compromised by telling her that it was a book, but didn’t tell her which one. A lot of their interactions involved him compromising between two extremes that she couldn’t seem to choose between, which made him feel as though he was a sensible, stabilizing influence in some way. He was grateful for it.

Parker longed to be the stabilizing force in his own life, but it seemed that the foundation he’d set was long cracked and growing weaker, eroding due to time and harsh weather. Repairs were in order, but at one point it was hard to stop the dissolution, impossible almost, and all one could do was slow it down for as long as possible. Entropy was inevitable⁠– something that his brother liked to say.

Google Search: What is entropy?

Google Search: What does entropy is inevitable mean?

Google Search: Why does everything go wrong?

Delete History.

There was one case which Parker could recall where things didn’t dissolve and spiral out of control for him, and that was actually his one with the person who knew what Murphy’s Law was; Kieran. That relationship moved in reverse, in which Parker’s mannerisms and attitude was not what slowly soured how his brother felt about him, but was instead looked at with a sort of warmth.

They had begun at a low point, at a brick wall which Parker longed to be on the other side of. Instead of tearing it down, brick by brick, as he thought the solution would be, he ended up instead building stairs to meet his brother at the top. He was Parker’s best friend, naturally and by far, and their relationship was like no other he’d had. He enjoyed having the company without the emotional exhaustion that generally came with it. Kieran was the perfect combination in Parker’s mind; he was simultaneously the most pretentious and the most genuine person that he’d ever met, and the two had grown so used to living with each other that it felt like they had their own language at some points. There was a fondness that grew out of familiarity, a love of the routine.

Parker passed Kieran in the living room with a small nod and stood in the kitchen as he decided what to make for lunch. He poked his head out of the refrigerator to frown at brother’s amused face, suddenly interested in what Parker was going to eat. A brick of Colby jack cheese sat at the top shelf, on display next to the orange juice. He sighed and decided he’d opt for a piece of fruit.

Google Search: How to be less embarrassing in front of a crush

Google Search: Pushing Daisies not touching relationship

Google Search: How to get someone to stop pushing you away

Delete History.

He wasn’t sure if he should text Jack or give him space. The night before had ended less than ideally, with tears and uncertainty. Parker opened up his texts and hovered his thumb over the screen before typing out a short message.

Hey, how are you today? 🙂

He deleted the message and rewrote it.

Hey, you feeling alright? 🙂

He deleted the message and rewrote it.

Hey 🙂

Parker deleted the message again and closed his phone, sighing to himself. He walked back into his room and sat at his desk. It hurt to think about Jack. It was worse to think about how much Jack liked him. It dawned on Parker that it was somewhat poetic that the only thing holding them back was fear. He hated poetry. It made as much sense as astrology.

He’d never before had fantasies about holding someone’s hand. Parker wanted Jack to press his hands into his chest to warm them and then decide to never leave. He wanted to hold him when he shook instead of standing there afraid of making things worse. He wanted to lie to him and himself and say that he didn’t care about being afraid and that he’d try to push through it and touch him anyway and whatever he felt he wouldn’t associate with him as a result. He wanted to kiss him when he squeaked and play Twister with him without having to worry about his gloves being latex free. He wanted what they’d had after that night, even if could only be for another brief moment.

Google Search: Will a weighted blanket feel like someone is hugging you?

Google Search: Do you actually need eight meaningful touches a day?

Google Search: Does sex count as a meaningful touch?

Delete History.

Parker picked up the phone again and opened up his texts. He stared at his contact list before tapping one and typing out a message.

Are you doing anything tonight?

His thumb hovered over the button for a moment before he sent the message, turned his phone over, and frowned to himself. He had never considered himself a very sexual person, but something about their teasing and back-and-forth was entertaining to Parker. He’d slipped into a routine without realizing it, and it was a good way to relieve stress that he’d built up over the week (and in the few minutes he had to deal with Alec before they slept together). He still didn’t like them, but there was a familiarity with them at this point, where both had grown comfortable enough to ask for ridiculous things and typically receive. It was a level of intimacy that only came with time and lack of shame.

Nope !!

Pencil me in?

You betcha!!!

Alec was by far the touchiest person that Parker knew, and while he would never say that he liked that trait, he’d begrudgingly come to accept it. There was something about nonsexual, nonromantic physical contact that he’d grown to miss, and he wasn’t sure if it was sad that he was only really getting it from someone he didn’t even like.

Google Search: Do all siblings hug?

Google Search: Is it weird to be close to your siblings?

Google Search: How to stop suddenly thinking about terrible things that you did when you were fifteen

Delete History.

Parker feared that whatever had happened with Nicola had driven a wedge between him and his other sister, who he’d always been so close to. He and Malia began to drift apart five years ago, and he still didn’t know if it was because of his crime against nature and the fact that she was a very touchy person with him or if it was the drugs, which had started around the same time. Part of him– a very small, shameful part– was almost relieved when he’d found out that she’d been using cocaine, because it meant that maybe he wasn’t to blame for driving her away. There was a strain on their relationship that he blamed on Jesse, on drugs, on her hanging out with the wrong people, but part of him knew that it was because he couldn’t look at her the same way as before, and he couldn’t even tell her why.

He loved his sister more than anything, and something about that turned his stomach, still to this day, even though he knew he could and would never have a relationship with her that was anything but platonic. He hated his mother for not claiming Nicola the moment she got to camp, not claiming her when he asked her out, not claiming her before their first kiss. He was just entertainment for her, a funny little tragic hero who didn’t end up clawing his eyes out or becoming a constellation. He was screwed by fate and by Aphrodite and he couldn’t even go to his biggest emotional support system to deal with it in fear of her hating him for his disgusting accident. Parker opened up his computer and ordered a weighted blanket.

Even with the tiny, self-loathing part of himself, Malia was still more than she could ever imagine to Parker. He couldn’t imagine a life without her– though he’d woken up to many dreams in which he had. He was glad that they were growing closer again, glad that she was trying, glad that they were able to laugh with each other again. It felt as though a pressure he didn’t know was there was taken off his chest and he could breathe fully again.

Google Search: How to get sauvignon blanc out of clothing

Google Search: What to do when your friend hates the person you like

Google Search: How to choose between two completely different things when you want both

Delete History.

Blue was unlike any other friend that Parker had, mostly in terms of personality. She was fiery and funny and had a mean streak, but she was as much of a bad influence on him as he was a good influence on her, which was to say that neither really influenced the other at all. They simply enjoyed each other, amused each other, didn’t talk about anything serious, but still supported each other.

She was the opposite of a fair weather friend. She was there to shake things up in times of calm and make his life more interesting. She was there to give him a reality check and tell him when he was being a stick in the mud or an asshole. She was not there right now because he was being an asshole. He missed her.

While Parker hadn’t been outright ignoring her when Jack wasn’t around, he also didn’t go out of his way to try to hang out with her, which he would blame on him being busy but which she would (correctly) call him out for just being a coward. He’d been avoiding Blue, avoiding the conversation, trying to avoid his feelings, and it blew up in his face. He hadn’t had a full conversation with her since the hot tubs, when he’d walked out on her, and then he fully ignored her during their game night. He turned a blind eye to his friend so that he could hang out with the guy that he liked who she’d attacked because he’d accidentally maimed her brother and... he was wrapped up in another tragedy.

Again and again the lines of Fate acted on Parker like he was a puppet. The one person he had feelings for was the one person that he couldn’t touch. He was (poetically, ironically, tragically) always just out of reach. Parker wished that the gods had chosen some kinder fate, like turning him into a flower or being struck by a rotting plank of wood. He wanted them to stop throwing telenovela plots into his life and let him just scoop ice cream and bake bread.

He opened up his messages to Blue.

Hi, are you free today to talk?

He deleted the message and tried again.

Hey, can we talk tomorrow?

He stared at the message and pressed send, then threw his phone on the bed so he wouldn’t have to see the response.

Google Search: Best foods to say you’re sorry with

Google Search: Am I ready to be in a relationship if I don’t know how to talk to people?

Google Search: How to tell if you’re breaking your own heart

Delete History.

#c: parker #para #clear cache #so this was some sort of weird concept and then it turned into an exploration of parker's relationships idk #there are no raw hot dogs being picked up but there are mommy issues!!!#also parker is....... so dramatic it's wild lmao

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arofili · 5 years

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Fornication and Relationships among the Eldar

[FaRE]: A Meta Analysis of LaCE

AO3 version of this can be found HERE!

I've been wanting to write this since like. 2016. and i finally got around to it thanks to the B2MeM prompt for "The universality of Laws and Customs among the Eldar" (O73) on the Silm Fanon Inversion card & @absynthe--minded‘s encouragement! thanks y'all!

Disclaimer right at the top: I may have gotten a few details here and there wrong. Blame fanon for that - this is as much an exploration of the fanon around LaCE as it is the actual document Tolkien wrote.

This meta can be shortened to "FaRE," mirroring the acronym "LaCE," but my roommate @berbss suggested the alternate title "Flaws and Customs among the Eldar" which is VERY funny and I needed to mention it.

CWs: lots of cursing, frank discussions of sex and sexuality, brief mention of rape, frequent insults to JRRT, obstinate queerness on the part of OP

Okay, so LaCE can be fun for plot reasons, and I want to preface this by saying that everyone's interpretations of this document are valid and I don't mean to shit on your headcanons, but let's be real! The whole idea that sex=marriage for elves is some real Catholic bullshit and Tolkien should be ashamed of himself.

The thing about LaCE, for me, isn't just "that's stupid and I want to write about elves that fuck" (though that is also true and valid). LaCE is is buckwild in a lot of ways, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense historically or culturally.

First of all, this is a Law and/or Custom of the Eldar. Who set down that law? When? Why? If it's a custom, does that mean it's not hard and fast for everyone? And it says /right there/ that it's a law/custom of the ELDAR, which leaves out the Avari entirely.

After all, another part of this law/custom is that marriage includes vows before Manwë, Varda, and Eru, none of whom are holy to the Avari. But the Avari are still elves; does that make them heathens in Tolkien's eyes? I mean, yes, definitely, but still! The Avari have no reason to follow this particular custom and were probably doing whatever the hell they wanted with their bodies and relationships.

But back to the Eldar. This rule stinks of the Valar to me. Eru was never that direct about what he wanted, and the Valar messed up all the time, especially when it came to elves. The Ainur don't need to procreate, after all, so why would they understand sex? Defining it in ways that they could divide into "right" and "wrong" is very much in character for them. And if it's a rule set down by the Valar and followed obediently by the Calaquendi...that raises a whole lot of questions about the Exiles.

Sure, maybe they followed that rule in Valinor, and the elves who live there might still follow it as well. If this law includes the "only one spouse" rules, we have good evidence that Finwë and his generation, at the least, were subject to it. But Fëanor and the other Noldorin Exiles forsook the Valar by returning to Middle-earth. Why would they keep this law if they are abandoning so many others?

Fëanor hated Indis, though, and might have wanted to cling to this law because of that. Or maybe not, and whatever he thought about marriage laws, his kin blamed the Valar for most of their troubles and this is another way to defy them. If you're partial to Russingon, Maedhros was already up to some illicit shit, and you can't tell me that ALL the Fëanorians were celibate in Beleriand. Like, c'mon, you know that Celegorm got some. (Or maybe not, your headcanons are VALID!)

The Arafinwëans and Nolofinwëans are direct results of a second marriage and the ~bending~ of marriage laws, if not their breaking. I wouldn't be surprised if they were willing to overlook this... though maybe Galadriel, at least, stuck to the rule and passed it onto her subjects in Lothlórien later. (Or not...this one's for you, Galadriel/Melian shippers. Also, tangent: do you really think MELIAN really stuck to this law? Come on, she married an elf! She doesn't give two shits about the Valar and their laws about Ainur not having kids or whatever the fuck!)

We've established that the Vanyar and the other Valinorian elves were all about this law, questioned whether the Noldorin exiles would stick to it, and determined that the Avari had no reason to ever start following this custom. But what about the Silvan and Sindar elves who started the journey to Valinor, but never finished?

We know elves had familial relationships in Cuiviénen; Elwë and Olwë were brothers, for some reason. But the first elves just kind of...HAPPENED. Did this first generation of elves just not know to procreate until the Valar set down laws for them? Sounds fake. Maybe Elwë and Olwë weren't first generation, but literal blood brothers, and just happened to be among the most important leaders later. Or not, who really knows.

Elves had to figure this shit out on their own before Oromë stumbled across them. Maybe the Eldar adopted the laws along the way, having sex and children along their long journey to Valinor. In that case, the Silvan and Sindar elves didn't have much of a reason to stop following the custom, because they never outright rebelled, just kind of drifted away. To me, this seems like the most plausible reason that the law endured.

But over the Ages and Ages of time separated from the beings who set down the law, I can't believe that no one questioned it. What happens if elves have sex but don't want to be married? What happens if they have sex and do want to be married, but don't say the vows? Does it not count, then? Maybe not in the eyes of the Valar, but how fussed are the Silvan and the Sindar about conforming to the Valar's every whim? ESPECIALLY the Silvan, who never saw the Valar's power firsthand in the War of Wrath.

And what about the Sindar elves who followed Oropher to Eryn Galen? If the Silvan elves there had long since abandoned the tradition, would this custom get lost in Mirkwood when Oropher's people assimilated (mostly) into Silvan culture?

And this is all assuming the custom developed while on the journey to Valinor! If it didn't get set down until they arrived in Aman, only the Calaquendi ever followed this practice. How, then, would the rest of the elves learn of it? Noldorin colonialism? (Looking at you, Galadriel.) Or would they not even bother with it, whatever they think of the Valar in general?

I've written a lot already, but you know what? Let's go deeper.

What about elvish interactions with other species? There are canon elf-mortal relationships, but you can't tell me that the ONLY elf-fuckers were Tuor, Beren, and Aragorn. Sure, maybe we only KNOW about the high and mighty elf princesses and their scandalous affairs, but the Noldor were more than their princes. There were normal people there, too! Fantasy Classism dictates that only the famous relationships got written down, with whispers of others like Aegnor/Andreth and Mithrellas/Imrazôr, but come on. There were more that happened, and more peredhel than just Elrond and his family. And y'all know I'm a slut for elf/dwarf relationships! Tauriel/Kíli may be a PJ Original but like this is NOT a new idea...it's got to have happened, right?

How do these interspecies marriages work? Mortals can fuck an elf and not be married. Would the elf be married to them, but not the other way around? (I know I've seen a Gigolas post about that...) That doesn't sound legit. This whole idea is full of holes.

Besides, who says the Valar kept this law? Aside from cultural drift, it's such a normative way of looking at relationships. I'd like to think the Valar can learn and grow, especially given the disastrous rebellion of Fëanor. Let's talk polyamory for a bit: so many problems could have been solved if Finwë/Míriel/Indis could have been allowed! With the Finwëan fiasco, you think the Valar would reassess what they did wrong there!

What counts as "sex" for the purposes of sex being the same thing as marriage? Just PIV? There's a lot of sexual acts outside of that narrow definition. Is penetration the key? Because there's ways around that. Or is it orgasm? Because that doesn't necessarily require another person. If it is just PIV, I guess that would make gay elves unable to marry, but like... come on! That's some real bullshit, even for Tolkien!

What about asexual elves? Sex-repulsed elves? I've seen people claim that all Tolkien elves are demisexual, which...I have issues with, but there definitely elves with complicated relationships to sex! Are sexless marriages not valid? Even if they include vows? Consummation laws are not great, y'all...

And what about aromantic elves? Elves who have nonromantic sexual relations? Is that unholy and evil? I know Tolkien wanted his Favorite Special Perfect Species to not have any lust or sexual sin, but this is just unrealistic. Besides, Tolkien wrote flawed and fallen heroes all the time, just look at Túrin and Maedhros and Fëanor! Even IF LaCE was meant to be taken as literally as we sometimes take it, his own world and characters break his rules frequently.

What about nonromantic and nonsexual relationships? Those get brushed over a lot irl, but Tolkien's works are full of them. Just look at Frodo & Sam, probably what he intended Maedhros & Fingon to be, Legolas & Gimli, etc... Some of those people will want their relationship formalized, maybe through calling it marriage. Does that not count? Is Tolkien really going to say that these relationships he writes, often at the core of his stories, are suddenly lesser?

I can tell this is just veering into my politics around relationships in general, so let's get back on track:

The important part of this whole custom should be the love and intent behind the vows, not the act of sex. Elves can get married if they're on the run, if need be, so it's not the actual ceremony that they value. What the people involved want should be enough to make it formal in the eyes of each other and of the Valar, if that's something they care about.

When it comes down to it, sex equaling marriage is a custom and/or a law, like it says in the title of LaCE. It's not an inherently biological trait...which makes the whole thing about how elves can "see" if someone has gotten married SUPER weird. Maybe what they can really see is the marriage-bond, visible through some funky kind of magic - I could buy that, and I've played with the idea in fic before.

But I maintain that sex CANNOT equal marriage, even by Tolkien's standards. Rape is clearly not marriage, as we see in the case of Celebrían. Elvish marriage has intent and ritual behind it, certainly; that is what makes it a custom. To me, this whole idea feels like a mistranslation or misconception that occurred when mortal scholars tried to understand elvish customs.

At least, that's the in-universe explanation. The out-of-universe explanation is just that Tolkien is a fucking coward.

#laws and customs among the eldar #silm #silmarillion #b2mem #silm meta #my meta #tefain nin #b2mem 2019 #bingo bonus #fornication and relationships among the eldar #absynthe minded #berbss #meta #tolkien meta #my fic

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violetemerald · 5 years

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Ok yes, I've decided I like the terminology of Alterous Attraction

I started dating my current partner about a month and a half ago.

Yesterday, I wrote to them:

So I've been scouring Tumblr, and also looking a little in an aromanticism Facebook group I'm in. I wanted to better understand what some people have been calling "alterous attraction" for a few years.

I think now that I've read quite a bit on the subject today during lunch and stuff I'm pretty sure it's a term that describes what I feel pretty well. In fact before I met you in person i was already wondering if maybe instead of saying I'm gray-pan-romantic I could/should just say I'm aromantic, asexual, but pan-alterous with strong emotions not on either the sexual or romantic axis at all? I don't think it feels right either to drop the gray-aro label though. I kinda maybe currently like alterous as a description of the way my gray-aro-ness plays out, if you bear with me.

There's a page on this wiki about the word: https://aromantic.wikia.org/wiki/Alterous

But there are much more in depth personal attempts at explaining it that I think better capture some of it, especially on Tumblr

The biggest problem is after 5 years of trying to figure out which, if any, of my attractions are romantic, I still don't even understand what romantic is supposed to be describing really if you take monogamous inclinations AND the tying it to sexual feelings both out of the equation. It's one of those "if you still don't know after 5 years you're definitely aro as romantic attraction is a know It when you feel It thing" However, I definitely feel certain things close enough to romance that It is impossible to just act like I'm totally clear cut aromantic.

It feels somewhat wrong to call what I feel for you right now "platonic", although of course it all depends on how broad an umbrella term platonic can be and how many emotions can fit in there.

In the asexual community and aromantic community people take for granted that the word platonic means nonromantic, and that things like friends with benefits could be sexual but not romantic and if they are nonromantic, even with sex it's platonic. That's where the evolution of the word platonic has gone despite mainstream society thinking platonic means nonsexual.

[Some places i frequent this was being explored.] Interesting takeaways there included that platonic actively describes *something*, but what that "something" is muggy be debated, but it's different in connotation than just the word nonsexual or just the word nonromantic. Aces probably saw the things usually described as platonic and inferred a different meaning than nonsexual - because sex and romance are so tied in most of society, they saw things that had love but were not of a romantic type of love what was most often called platonic and took it to mean that to fill a certain lexical gap without realizing that they were even changing the definition?

When queerplatonic was coined as a term the idea was queering what platonic could mean was necessary, to show how intense or deep "platonic" feelings could indeed be, but it was about the relationship, and the only words anyone was using for the attraction was still basically just "platonic attraction" or maybe "emotional attraction" etc but avoiding the word "romantic".

But the ace and aro conversations splintered in different directions and people who were involved in coining queerplatonic were into middle age adulthood (or like whatever we call being in your 30s) with less time for ace blogging and less energy for all the fighting against the exclusionists etc. And new people started saying that queerplatonic relationships were in between platonic and romantic, and even using the amatonormative phrasing "more" than platonic feelings in various ways, instead of just saying "different". When some of the older ace bloggers caught on that this word "alterous" was being used to mean what people had already decided platonic meant except saying it was NOT platonic, well... Idk there were kinda a lot of people i had been reading for years saying no they don't buy into alterous as a concept.

But now that I've had years to reflect on it, I think I've warmed up to the term, warmed way up and have been thinking for a little while that it might be the word I needed all along. One Tumblr post said it's the desire to not "date" someone as much as to "become family" with them.

One person on Facebook said:

I'm polyalterous and I've definitely struggled to explain it in ways that make sense to others, or at least to alloromantics. It's been a while so I might make more sense now.

For me it's like, there's platonic attraction and then there's that muddled with something else. I think the problem explaining was that I can't explain whatever it is it's muddled with.

Recently I saw another -alterous person describing it with colors. Like if romantic attraction is red and platonic is yellow alterous attraction is orange.

But looking at that person's words, I think if you can't explain what it's muddled with, maybe alterous isn't clearly right in the middle but is yellow-green or something clearly distinct from romance, and like platonic feelings, but with something else too.

And a person who identifies as idemromantic (which they explain here) said:

...a wider variety of options! Romantic attraction is fulfilled by a romantic relationship, platonic is fulfilled by a friendship, sexual attraction is fulfilled by sex etc - alterous attraction, for me, is fulfilled by friendship OR romance, which really makes things easier. XD

The interesting dynamics here are that, if basically any of my friends asked me out I'd probably be game, but also, if I ask someone out and get turned down it's no big deal. Like I wouldn't be sad if my partner broke up with me, unless ze also decided not to be my friend anymore.

Another way I've put it is, I'm low-key in love with all my close friends, but in a way that doesn't demand anything but friendship to feel like it's fulfilled?

Also, idemromantic is basically defined as a type of grayromantic wherein whether what you feel is categorized as romantic or platonic attraction is determined by outside factors.

There is always variety in how people will experience a form of attraction, so obviously not all people who believe they experience alterous attraction (which is sometimes treated as a synonym for platonic attraction certain places, and sometimes especially as a synonym for the rarely used "queerplatonic attraction") will feel the same way about things.

But the more I read on it the more it kinda does feel like it describes my feelings pretty accurately. Alloromantic asexuals usually like kissing and cuddling and holding hands it seems like, and I know I'm demisensual for that axis of attraction (hugging and cuddling and other touch... but more than likely not mouth kissing at all). Aesthetic attraction is often maybe a part of alloromantic ace crushes too. But none of that is quite me. I think I feel alterous attraction quite fast into meeting certain select people...?

Other things like desire in the abstract to have a partner to go through life with have nothing to do with attraction, but I do also feel a type of attraction that has been really annoyingly hard to describe for too many years and I still want to describe it after all that time. So. I don't like just deciding I'm not going to. That isn't satisfying to me. Alterous as a word now feels more satisfying.

#aromanticism #aromantic #queerplatonic relationship #queerplatonic #alterous attraction #platonic attraction

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qvincvnx · 5 years

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maybe don’t.

ok i did reblog that post and immediately reblog it but like

please, please, don’t reblog that post about how acting as if ~academia~ isn’t ~hiding the secret gays~ and ~to suggest otherwise is like probably rightwing scaremongering~ oh my god.

being ~an academic~ doesn’t excuse you from heterosexuality, academics are OFTEN homophobic - this isn’t even counting the ones who ARE liberal, even wonderfully supportive to queer students, they may spout shit off in the classroom because of WHEN or how they THEMSELVES were taught, often decades ago

there are plenty of conservative classicists! PLENTY of them! not so much at the school i go to, but i HAVE still had two separate (wonderful, supportive, helpful) professors present achilles and patrocles as platonic, nonsexual, nonromantic “best friends” in the last year alone - one because he clearly just hadn’t thought about it, but the other one because he was uncomfortable bringing up homosexuality in class!

like oh my god! oh my god! stop it!!!!!

#stop saying 'no one would ever do that' i am so glad that homophobia doesn't exist in your life i guess but fucking!#hrghghfdhg!

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kaikiky · 5 years

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getting to “aromantic”

ASAW 2019 Prompt 1 | February 17-18 | Discovery : How did you learn you were aromantic or arospec?

So, I’m really bad at participating in community things. I want to, but I have all this baggage in my past from when I would try to enter into something and then just get ignored until I drifted out again. So I became convinced a long time ago that there’s no point to being a member of anything.

But I saw the prompt for today and it made me want to write down my history regarding aromanticism.

(long post under the cut)

I don’t actually remember when I learned about aromanticism, but I’m guessing it was some time in 2013, maybe when I encountered the SAM. Since I can’t remember how I felt at the time I found it, I’ll just do a walk-through of how it all looks to me from my current perspective.

My asexuality has never been in question, because I’ve never wanted sex either on a conscious level or a physical level. But I have had desires for close, intimate relationships. When I was in elementary school, I had a best friend, and that was the person I felt closest to, the person I imagined being with the rest of my life. We talked about how when we had kids (we were like, seven years old at the time, so I could still talk about having kids in a hypothetical way without feeling viscerally repulsed) they would marry each other and then we could be siblings. I was literally imagining being best friends with her my whole life and it was awesome.

And then my family moved and she stopped contacting me, and I was devastated. It’s still a kind of trauma for me being dropped by my best friend, who I had been planning to spend my life with. To me, she was all I had, but she was popular and had a lot of people to replace me with. It destroyed me. It’s part of why I’m scared to talk to people who already have friends because I think, well, if they have friends already they don’t need me. I’m unnecessary.

I never wanted a lot of friends, I only ever wanted one best friend, because I’m an introvert. I don’t have a lot of energy to spend on people, so I wanted that one person who I could give all my social time and attention to. If I had to spread my social energy out among a bunch of people, there was no way I could get close to anyone. So in order to have enough energy to form a deep relationship, I needed there to be just one person.

But I could never find anyone who seemed right. I would have some school-friends, but no one who had the right vibe to them, the kind that made me feel like “this is someone I want to be with the rest of my life”, so I didn’t invest much in them. I was friendly, but I didn’t bother getting too deep because I knew we were going to move on from each other eventually.

And we did.

I went all through school and graduated high school without any real friends, and I was fine with that (college was a bit more complicated...). I was too busy studying to have time for friends anyway. And honestly I was happy being single - in real life.

Instead, I spent my time fantasizing about fictional characters, the ones who seemed like the kind of people I wanted to have those deep, intimate relationships with. Even in my fantasies I was still an introvert who only wanted one relationship at a time. And I interpreted these fantasies as “romantic”, because it felt like the way people described romantic feelings: the fluttery sensation in your stomach and heart, that feeling like you want to be with them all the time and you can’t stop thinking about them, the giddy happiness when you see them, the excitement of feeling like you found “the one”. I had that when I thought about these characters.

But in my fantasies, there was no kissing or hand-holding or much romance-coded behaviors. There was always a lot of quiet intimacy, like talking about anything and everything, feeling like there was something special between us that there wasn’t with anyone else, going on adventures together and trusting in each other when we fought villains (rather than one being the fighter and one being helpless and needing protection). We were equals in all things and there was just this connection like we were always on the same wavelength with everything, so there was never any awkwardness or miscommunication or fights between us. We trusted and respected each other completely and prioritized each other and cared deeply about each other. It was this feeling of perfect compatibility that had nothing physical about it and was mostly just about feeling completely at ease with each other.

That was the kind of thing I fantasized about and wrote stories about, and when I was younger I thought that was romance? maybe? Because I knew that no one else thought of “best friends” as something that intimate. Best friends were like, something you had when you were in school, but you were supposed to grow out of that when you were older. But my idea of a relationship wasn’t something that you grew out of, it was the most intimate companionship you could ever have, and so if the name for that wasn’t “best friend” then I guess it was supposed to be romance.

So I thought I had all these “romantic” feelings for fictional characters because I thought they would be perfect intimate companions for me, people I related to on a deep level and who I thought I would be able to talk to about serious, deep subjects and who I would feel comfortable being close to. I had the feeling that if I was in a close relationship with them, I would have found the one person I wanted to spend all my social energy with.

(And just to be upfront, all the characters I felt this for were male characters, because honestly I don’t relate to or like 99.9% of female characters, and I’m sure that’s because writers don’t know how to write female characters, but there it is.)

So I had been on Tumblr since 2011, but I didn’t join any fandom niche until 2015, and for a while I performed the whole “ecstatic fangirl” role by reblogging pictures of my favorite characters and replying with gifs and all caps fawning and tags like I was having a heart attack over how hot they were. And like, I do think the characters are aesthetically attractive, but I played it up to a sensational degree because that just seemed like what you were supposed to do. But deep down, it felt fake. I didn’t want to focus on how they looked, I wanted to imagine having late-night conversations with them when no one else was around. I wanted to imagine being their partner in a dangerous fight when we had to have each other’s backs. I wanted to imagine wandering alone in the woods together. I wanted to imagine listening to music together and singing along and dancing.

And then of course, there was all the shipping. People coming up with all sorts of outrageous ships or outrageous “proofs” and metas for why the popular ships were canon. But to me, they were absolutely not canon. Every relationship that I interpreted as deeply intimate in a nonsexual nonromantic way, fandom hijacked and put on a pedestal as the ultimate ship. It alienated me from fandom in a way that made me deeply resentful. I was honestly stunned. The yugioh fandom was my first real experience with fandom, so I had had no idea how big shipping was until I stepped in and saw it flooding everything. And it made me angry that the relationships that had always mattered to me because they felt like exactly what I was looking for—deep, close companionship that wasn’t physical or dramatically romantic—were being coded as sexual and romantic.

It hurt me and made me so angry that eventually I dropped the performance of hyper fangirl because I stopped wanting to be part of the fandom. I wanted to retreat back into my own shell where the characters and their relationships were the way I had always interpreted them, not tainted by fandom’s twisted imagination.

And I think that was around the time that I figured out that I didn’t even understand what the fuck romance was. To me, romance seemed to be the kind of bullshit you saw in romcoms. Romance was the factor that made people do stupid things and get into fights over unnecessary miscommunications. It made people paranoid and jealous and possessive in an aggressive way. It made (stupid, ridiculous) drama that distracted from everything in the story that actually mattered. Basically, romance seemed unhealthy and undesirable. So when I finally made that connection that romance didn’t mean intimacy or love but meant unnecessary stupidity and drama, it was easier for me to identify as aromantic and identify those things as what I was repulsed by.

The feelings themselves are harder to separate. Like, I don’t know exactly what romantic love specifically is supposed to feel like as opposed to any other kind of love, but I do know that I’m uncomfortable with a lot of romance-coded behaviors like kissing and hand-holding and grand gestures of love (especially in public) or candlelight dinners or lots of hearts everywhere. Those things turn me off in a big way.

I just want the feeling of intimacy, of feeling like I’m known by someone completely and loved because of who I am, and that in turn I know that person completely and love everything about them. I don’t want the relationship to be defined by the things we go out of our way to do (like setting aside time specifically to go on dates), I want it to be defined by a natural feeling of rightness, like we can exist together and it feels good, like we just kind of naturally gravitate toward each other because our energies are the same, our personalities are the same, our morals and values and likes and dislikes are the same.

There was a time where the term “quoiromantic” felt right to me because of that confusion over what makes romantic love distinct from any other, and I still think that term makes sense. But because of the cultural obsession with romance, I got to a point where “aromantic” felt like the better fit because I actively reject that obsession, I reject the idea that romantic love is the highest kind of love, and I reject all the trappings that come with love that is interpreted as romantic.

So I don’t think of the way I feel toward these characters as romantic attraction anymore, and I think part of what attracted me to these characters in the first place was always because interpreted them as not being interested in romantic relationships either, so it made us a good fit.

#asaw 2019 #aromantic #Ky says #about Ky tag

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reconditarmonia · 4 years

Text

Dear Gen Freeform Writer

(Edit: I apologize for not coming back to fill out this placeholder. It’s unlike me and it’s negatively affected you. I hope this addition comes at a time when it’s still useful to you; it largely replicates my signup but expands on some things.)

Hi! Thank you for writing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3. I have anon messaging off, but mods should be able to contact me if you have any questions.

Fullmetal Alchemist | Machineries of Empire | Legend of Korra

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, manual sex, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity; stories whose resolution isn’t the sex scene.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships.

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Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist

Group(s): Roy Mustang & Riza Hawkeye

Competence - highly effective teamwork

Intensely Important Nonsexual Nonromantic Relationship

Loyalty - Betraying Leader or Subordinate to Save Them

Loyalty - Deferring To Leader or Subordinate's Judgment

Loyalty - Gestures of Loyalty

Loyalty - Risking Self For Someone

Loyalty - Swearing

I love the loyalty kink in this canon, and in this duo specifically: the trust and competence and stoically hidden but very very intense feelings, the willingness to risk oneself or the other person, or to stake a lot on the other person’s competence (and willingness to hurt or sacrifice the other person because their shared cause says it’s right, too, all the times that comes up), the fighting together in tandem.

So - a dangerous mission (or intelligence-collecting situation) where their deep familiarity/trust/awareness of each other’s presence and fighting style and communication come into play (god, that bit in canon where Hawkeye shoots two guys right over Mustang’s shoulder), or where they worry about each other’s safety, or rescue each other? Or a more private scene? I love the intimacy of their work relationship and personal history, on levels from casual to very intense. I love the "protect my back" exchange so, so much (I'm particularly interested in fics set during a time when that is already part of their relationship history, rather than fics set in Ishval or shortly after, and I am not really interested in fics set when they were children or young adults at all) and the way that, eventually, ends up playing out with regard to Envy.

Group(s): Olivier Mira Armstrong & Briggs Soldiers, Olivier Mira Armstrong & Mile, Olivier Mira Armstrong & Miles & Briggs Soldiers

Competence - highly effective teamwork

FMA: Everyone at Briggs Is Gay

Loyalty - Deferring To Leader or Subordinate's Judgment

Loyalty - Gestures of Loyalty

Loyalty - Risking Self For Someone

I love the loyalty kink in this canon, and in Briggs specifically - both heartwarming and id-satisfying. (The watch! Buccaneer handing Olivier a clean pair of gloves after she kills Raven! Constant and deeply sincere saluting! And Olivier’s lack of patience for anyone’s shit.) Ordinary or extraordinary circumstances - daily life in the fort, a battle with Drachma where they work together seamlessly, surviving a storm or the typical winter cold? Entire Briggs Is Gay would also non-ironically be neat, as would other ways of exploring the idea of Briggs being a united wall made up of people with a lot of secrets and/or racial and gender differences. This of course can bring in Miles specifically - I love the scene where he recounts Olivier's explanation of why it's important to her to have him as her right-hand man.

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Fandom: Machineries of Empire

Group(s): Ajewen Cheris & Shuos Jedao, Rhezny Brezan & Devenay Ragath & Neshte Khiruev, Shuos Mikodez & Shuos Zehun, Shuos Nija & Shuos Feiyed

Intensely Important Nonsexual Nonromantic Relationship

Loyalty - Betraying Leader or Subordinate to Save Them

Loyalty - Deferring To Leader or Subordinate's Judgment

Loyalty - Gestures of Loyalty

Loyalty - Swearing

No moral compass so I'll borrow yours instead

Platonic Kneeling

I love the loyalty kink in this canon and the various forms it takes - "I'm your gun" with the kneeling, Mikodez showing the contingency plans to Zehun to make a point, Ragath defecting from the Kel because of what they did to his soldiers - and the variety of important, intense platonic relationships. I don't have a lot of particular plot prompts (I'd just love to see more loyalty and trust, especially under strain - deferring to someone's competence or sense of ethics even though you don't know how it will turn out, making difficult choices, verbal or nonverbal displays of loyalty like the kneeling and swearing and the glove thing)...but for Cheris and Jedao I'm especially interested in a post-Glass Cannon timeframe. (Oh my god, they were roommates telepathically bonded. I quite like their Ninefox Gambit interactions as well when he's in her head, but the fallout of everything that happens in the series and how it creates that strong Jedao->Cheris loyalty is very good.) For Nija and Feiyed I reckon Feiyed mentors Nija after rescuing/recruiting her, and maybe they work together in future? Brezan, Khiruev and Ragath in the Revenant Gun timeline or after, trusting each other with the future of the former hexarchate and working together on an interpersonal level? Mikodez and Zehun at any time, oh my god. I also enjoy the faction loyalty within the Kel and within the Shuos in general, and seeing that play out in some proportion or other of ritualized and personal.

Fandom-Specific DNW: I'm aware that there's a lot of torture and dubcon in canon. I don't mind if you mention that they exist but I'd like to reiterate that I absolutely do not want any onscreen, or any details about torture even mentioned.

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Fandom: Legend of Korra

Group(s): Korra & Kuvira, Korra & Zaheer

Learning from an Enemy

Mentor/Mentee Relationships

One thing I enjoyed about seasons 3 and 4 of Korra was the writing team’s attempt to write villains who were sincerely committed ideologues with valid points, even if they became evil in pursuit of their goals, and to figure out how Korra could relate to those villains as the Avatar and as the person that she is. I loved how Korra needed to seek help from Zaheer because as an anarchist he truly opposed what Kuvira was doing and wanted to help Korra, and how she was able to empathize with Kuvira at the end of s4 because the two have some big personality similarities. How might they continue to work together or influence each other after the end of s4? I don’t need a redemption arc if that’s not what you’re interested in writing - Zaheer and Kuvira can absolutely continue to believe that their ideals were correct and even that not all of their methods were wrong - but I would be interested in reading about Korra getting more mental/spiritual tutoring from her enemy Zaheer and deciding how much of that she wants to integrate into her practice, seeking Kuvira’s advice on how to handle ongoing developments in the Earth Kingdom as it transitions to a republic, sparring or practicing bending with Kuvira, Spirit World meditation adventures with Zaheer… (I haven’t read the comics, so you can either take or leave comics canon.)

Fandom-Specific Exception: I've been a Korrasami shipper since s1, so if your vision for this fic includes a big part for Asami, consider that an exception to my unrequested-ships DNW.

#dear author letters

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