A love letter to summer
June 28th, 2022
On those warm mornings, you make me feel so full and fuzzy. Your light shines so gently on me and you make me feel like I can take on the whole world with just my bare hands. You make me feel grateful to be alive and I want to create endless memories that would become endless stories to be recount. I wish I could live eternally with you by my side. I love the way you breath life into all matters and how you bring everyone and everything together so beautifully and effortlessly. You are so very mysterious and kind, and I? I am so hopelessly in love with you.
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Sherlock Holmes: Aro-Spec, A-Spec, Gay Icon
What is Sherlock Holmes' orientation?
Asexual? Aromantic? Homosexual/romantic? Why not all three?
Something I've noticed during my time in this fandom is that people can't always agree on what Sherlock's sexual/romantic orientation is. Most people say that he's gay, some people say that he's ace. These two headcanons are rarely paired together.
I've seen people who think he's asexual be called homophobic because it feels like it's taking away from the gay representation they get from Johnlock. What they don't appear to realize is that asexual people can still have romantic or even sexual relationships. It also seems that people confuse being asexual with being aromantic a lot. Asexuality and aromanticism are not the same thing.
(There are lots of people who don't ship Johnlock, and either ship Sherl with someone else or with no one and that's valid! I personally am a Johnlock shipper)
Asexuality is defined as a lack of sexual attraction and Aromanticism is defined as a lack of romantic attraction. Both of these have a spectrum as well.
Asexual people can experience sexual attraction, only experience it sometimes, or not experience it at all. If you are anywhere on the asexual spectrum, it simply means that you don't experience an urge to have sex with someone in some or all cases.
You might enjoy sex. You might be repulsed by it. You might be completely indifferent towards it. You might even have urges every now and then. That is still valid. On one end of the spectrum, you don't experience any sexual attraction, on the other, you do experience sexual attraction, and all throughout the middle are varying levels of attraction/urges or lack thereof. There are more identities out there under the ace umbrella. There's demisexual which means that you only experience sexual attraction towards people you've developed an emotional connection with first. Greysexual means that you rarely experience sexual attraction, but it does happen sometimes. Lithosexual means you experience sexual attraction, but don't want it reciprocated. There are many more, you can do your research if you want to know all of them. I don't want to make this post too long, as I fear I may already have done.
The same thing goes for the aromantic spectrum.
Being aromantic means that you don't experience romantic attraction. Depending on where you are on the spectrum, you may experience romantic attraction sometimes, or not at all. Some aromantic people love the idea of romance, romantic gestures, have no problem holding hands, kissing, etc. You can participate in romantic relationships, you can get married, and it will never mean you're less aromantic. All being aromantic means is that you don't feel romantic attraction. It being a spectrum means that on one end, you do experience romantic attraction and on the other end you don't. All in the middle, you experience varying levels of romantic attraction. The labels are basically the same as the ace labels and mean basically the same thing.
(Edit: I've just noticed that I forgot to mention queer platonic relationships. So here we go)
Aromantic people may experience feelings for friends that go beyond friendship, but aren't in anyway romantic or sexual. They may choose to form relationships with others that are more than friendship but not quite romantic. These are called Queer Platonic Relationships or QPRs. They are just as valid as romantic relationships and are not just friendships. People in QPRs love their partner just as deeply, if not more so than people in romantic relationships.
When someone is asexual, but not aromantic, you put a label for their romantic attraction. For example: Biromantic asexual, heteromantic asexual, homoromantic asexual, panromantic asexual, etc.
So basically, you can experience limited or no sexual/romantic attraction and still have relationships. You can be aroace and gay. So therefore my headcanon is that Sherlock is grey-homoromantic asexual.
It took me a little bit of deciding between demiromantic and greyromantic. But they both sound just as cliche as the other. In both cases, John is the one and only person that Sherlock ever falls in love with. If he's demi, it's because he's never gotten this emotionally close to someone before and that's why John is his only love. But I wanted to see Sherlock struggle with his new, unfamiliar romantic feelings from the beginning. From that very first day that John walked into the lab at Bart's.
Sherlock doesn't even know what the weird emotions he's feeling are. They are subtle at first, because love at first sight is even more cliche. He doesn't really start to feel them as anything too distracting or difficult until the pool incident. Almost losing John, caused other unfamiliar feelings that Sherlock didn't want to deal with, along with the telltale signs of romantic love. But Sherlock chooses to ignore it for as long as possible, denying the fact that he could be in love with anyone. Let alone his very straight, not gay in the slightest, bi in denial roommate. It's too much of a risk with anyone. Platonic relationships are already a risk, but he's seen the strange things that romantic love can do to people. He doesn't allow himself to feel most emotions anyway, why would he allow himself to feel romantic love?
Once he allows himself to realize that the emotion he's feeling is romantic love, he struggles with his identity. He knows that he's aromantic, so how is it possible that he's feeling this way? Eventually he will come to discover greyromanticism and realize that he's not crazy, and he's not suddenly alloromantic. He is experiencing rare romantic feelings for John, which he's never experienced before and will likely never experience again.
He's still aromantic. He's not "fixed". Sherlock is valid in being aromantic and feeling romantic attraction.
Then add in some asexual tension once they finally get together and we should be good to go!
Thank you for reading. Hopefully that wasn't too long for you.
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Under a Golden Moon short story: The Thief
The tortoiseshell glances over hir shoulder. Nobody's there, ze thinks, but ze can't convince hirself it's true - if ze's wrong, it's hir death that will be the result. Ze's risking so much for this. It'll be worth it, though.
It has to be.
Ze takes a last deep breath before striding forward, steadying hir shivering as much as ze can. The building is tall, blocky, built of hard stone. It stretches up to the sky like a message.
The door is unlocked. This can't be right, it can't be this easy. But the cat reaches out a white paw, scarred with the marks of a slip-up when ze first started whittling. Ze never made that mistake again: ze has learned by now that ze must be cautious. That lesson will stand hir in good stead. Ze hopes.
A glance around. Everything here is brightly-coloured. To the tortoiseshell's left, the stairs stretch upwards, and ze runs up them, taking them two at a time, then three, no longer cautious of the risk. Ze's almost there. Almost there.
"There it is!" Ze can't stop hirself from exclaiming hir excitement. Immediately ze regrets it. There's nobody else here, but the sound of hir voice makes hir feel sick. As it always does. Ze grabs the rectangular object, clad in every shade of the rainbow, and tucks it into the bag hung over hir shoulder. A brief smile.
And now ze runs.
But the door is closed now, and didn't ze leave it open?
Ze places a paw onto the inner handle, tries to push it down and open the door.
Locked.
Panicking now, ze spins around. Hir breath is shallow. Ze can't think. Can't breathe now. Except ze could if ze just pulled hirself together.
What's even the point of this? Ze's lying to hirself. Might as well leave hir precious prize behind, because it won't change who ze is.
No.
Ze's come too far, risked too much, to surrender this hope, hopeless though it may be.
Ze looks around for a key. If ze can't find one, ze doubts hir small amount of strength will be enough to force the door open - in which case ze's trapped. Nobody knows ze's here. Nobody can know, because nobody will understand.
"Could have sworn I'd closed that door," a voice mutters from the next room. "Can't let the books get damaged. N' if Yew's Guard get to it they're gonna burn 'em all, probably."
The thief - because that is what ze is, not a simple scavenger as ze had thought - starts. Ze isn't the only one who knows about this place. Ze isn't the only one who knows about the danger if it is discovered.
Ze makes sure that the book is secure, and tightens hir grip on the handle of hir bag, painted with the colours that allegedly symbolise hir identity: two shades of orange, white, two shades of blue. Nobody else in Yew's Guard knows the meaning. If they did, ze would have been exiled by now - hence the need for secrecy. But ze had to indulge this one childish hope.
The door to the other room opens, and the thief ducks behind a shelf. A short, scarred tabby walks through the door. They glance at the door, then to the shelf where the thief hides.
"Who's there?" they ask.
Well. Ze's caught now.
"Just me," ze says, stepping out from behind the shelf, clutching the bag in the same manner that a drowning cat might clutch a rope connecting them to the shore.
"And who're you?"
"I'm…my name is…" ze stops. Ze's not ready for that. "I'm just here to look, I…I swear! I'm not stealing or anything, but it's dangerous at home and -"
The tabby sighs.
"You took a book. Didn't you." It's not even a question.
"Yes, but I'll - I'll return it - just -"
"No. Keep it. You need it. I'm Autumn, by the way. She/her." She unlocks the door
The thief nods. "My pronouns are… are ze/hir." There's a freedom in admitting it. "And… I mean, my parents called me Golden… and I like the name… but I'm… I don't know, you're meant to change it, aren't you?"
"Don't let anyone force ya to do that. 's your name, not theirs."
The thief nods again.
And makes hir escape.
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