#THE A STANDS FOR AROMANTIC AND ASEXUAL NOT FUCKING ALLY

[wizardly-weirdo]

To adress this recent discourse I saw

Cishet Aromantic men ARE LGBT!

No other way around it, they are queer and if you disagree go fuck yourself

[mrblazeflappybird]

Those in favour of adding more A's to LBGTQIA+ so that we don't, for some reason, have three separate identities use one letter and constantly get forgotten by everyone?

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

new and improved aro/ace poll

[mitsukiixx]

Me Bored so I present to you my Marauders Sexuality and Gender Identity headcanons:

(disclaimer this is an opinion and I also tend to go along with multiple headcanons at the same time that sometimes contradict each other, so don't come for me, these are fictional characters, chillax) (also this could make zero sense cuz I'm doing this at 2 am)

James: Pansexual, cis man. He just loves people, he doesn't care what or who they are.

Sirius: Bi or omniesexual (preference for men) and genderfluid. Though most commonly he goes by he/him, bro defies gender, any pronouns work for him. Also drag queen Sirius is a hill I WILL DIE ON.

Remus: I don't know what any of y'all say that is a gay man. If you chant "gay" three times in a mirror he will appear behind you. Dude touched a woman ONCE at the age of 14 just to check if he is into women and after that just said "cool, never again". Cis man but he won't correct you if you call him by other pronouns.

Peter: Cis He/him straight ALLY! I love Peter trying his best and be a supportive friend and then Sirius teasing him saying "that's homophobic" every chance he gets and just watching Peter's face turn pale and be eaten out with guilt. Bbg is just utterly confused. He asks what each letter stands for in the LGBTQ+ all the time and tries his best to learn. (He's the embodiment of the "Talk Valentina- ALLY" meme iyk what I'm talking about)

Mary: Lesbian, she/her. Thought she was bi for some time but at some point she just said "fuck men". I also would like to believe she is most people's gay awakening.

Lily: Bisexual, she/ her. She was in the river nile (denial) for the longest time. Mary and Marlene had to DRAG her out of that glass closet.

Marlene: She/they and is a massive girlkisser. No explanation needed.

Pandora: She/they and pansexual. She's also asexual, but not aromantic. However not many people are aware of her girl-kissing tendencies and get jumped-scared if she ever mentions that she's dating a girl.

Regulus: Dude is the 2nd most gay man in Hogwarts after Remus (he would might give an exception to one woman but that's just me being a Jegulily shipper). Trans man, he/him.

Barty: He/him, Pansexual. Dude will fuck anything and everything(including pans and especially Evan).

Evan: He/they, omniesexual with preference for men. (More like Bartysexual tho)

Alice: She/her, pansexual, polyamorous

Frank: He/him omniesexual with preference for women. Polyamorous. He and Alice would happily accept another person into their relationship.

Severus: A straight white man.

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

NPD asexual culture is legit wanting to kill straight people who think that the ‘a’ in LGBTQIA+ stands for ‘ally’. NO IT DOESN’T, IT STANDS FOR ASEXUAL AND/OR AROMANTIC, IT’S MINE, NOT YOURS, FUCK OFF, DON’T FUCKING DARE TO TRY AND CLAIM IT.

.

[stygianheart]

I think one of my “favorite” things is when people misinterpret what it means to be aroace. Watching people so clearly not understand the complexity behind the spectrum of aromatic and asexuality and then proceed to say they “stand with” aroace as an ally is so hilarious to me. Especially when they use this to start bashing on a perfectly fine ship, especially because said ship gets in the way of theirs.

Aroace does not mean no attraction. The plastered poster face for it is people who don’t feel ANY types of attraction, but that does not mean everyone. Aromantic people can date and fall in love. Asexual people can fuck. Aroace people can do both.

Yes, aroace rep IS needed. But we still have it via Luffy—just because Luffy kisses someone (hypothetically) doesn’t mean we just yeeted the aroace label off of him. He is STILL aroace. You know who else is aroace? Bon Clay, for one. Zoro as well. Yet I don’t see people screaming that shipping Zoro with someone completely erases the aroace label, now do I?

Ugh, I’d totally make a whole ass essay about this, but it’s half till midnight. It’s just. Been on my mind for a few hours and I need to say a little shit

[starsofthestorm]

Getting fucking sick of seeing the "aces / aros don't belong in lgbtq IF they're cishet <3" genuinely shut the fuck up

straight trans people exist. are they not valid? are heterosexual transgender people invalid???

"they don't face the oppression we do !!!" That's not what makes someone lgbtq and there is SO much fucking aphobia

A cisgender heterosexual aromantic is part of lgbtq+.

a cisgender heteromantic asexual is part of lgbtq+

the "a" does not fucking stand for ally.

[akalimbratic]

Pride collection!

Decided to do some pride specific art! Unfortunately Dryll’s background overshadows her flag but honestly? I fuck with it a lot. It makes sense for her to be pretty subtle about her preferences and her looking on into a suspiciously lesbian flavored sunset may imply a thing or two. With that I’ll just drop these here with short blurbs about each one presented and be on my way! I’ll also either today or tomorrow post some more pride stuff, but specifically worldbuilding related, like how certain species views gender and sexuality.

1. Red - Dryll. Unfortunately I will admit she does fall into the new ace/aro trope of becoming something monstrous, but I do plan to give plenty of spotlight to other ace/aro characters that don’t. She just— was always planned to be overtaken, and also ace. I just wanted her looking out at a sunset because most of my art surrounding her is angst, she deserves a quiet moment too.

2. Orange - Dhoramir and Deyne. Two important side characters in the main story! I’m depicting their wedding here, but changed their dress colors to match the mlm flag. I do need to decide what Deyne’s medical equipment looks like, so the tank on his back is just a placeholder. I want it to fit in the lore of the world while also still very clearly being essential medical equipment. Cause before I admit, I never drew it given that I didn’t think to give him any.

3. Yellow - Ayen and Aurieliano/Ti’ber. They’re two sides of the same coin! Or more specifically, Ayen is one side while Ti’ber is the coin. Who’s the other side? Only time will tell. Regardless, even though this interaction wouldn’t actually be possible, I wanted to depict Aurie in one of their happier forms. Aurieliano belongs to my friend goldylore. Not sure what they’re talking about, but it seems like a good conversation.

4. Green - Hester, Rekahm, Iŕdauk. Hester belongs to my friend Astrum (who doesn’t have a tumblr atm) and I decided to depict them at their happiest, which is why Iŕ doesn’t have half her face burnt off. Though that is subject to change timeline wise, I haven’t fully decided. With that! I just have to learn to write a polyam pairing properly but for now we indulge in the art.

5. Blue - Ursula and Lucian. Both ace, but Ursie’s panromantic where Lucian’s heteromantic. Ursula belongs to my friend @goldylore and Lucian belongs to my friend Capri! Who I don’t think has a tumblr rn. I love these sillies because their pairing was the result of a misunderstanding ooc.

6. Purple - Devulk and Erothyn. Not much to say here! I just find it fitting if I wrapped up this collection with two gods that stand at the ends of the spectrum, hence why Devulk is in black and white and Eroth is holding pride flag colors.

Finally some Hestdauk art to tie it all together. Listening to Closer to the Moon did not do me any favors, they wound me.

Honorable mentions

Atvaths - all intersex with rare cases of being born as one gender

Kiburu - all genderfluid with rare cases of remaining as one gender

Maple - a straight ally

Chaos - genderfluid, agender

Order - aromantic and asexual

[hard--headed--woman]

The A in LGBTQIA+ doesn't stand for ally you absolute fuckface, it stands for Aspec (ie asexual/AROMANTIC/agender). The only person who doesn't belong in the community is you. Oppressors do not belong in spaces with the people they're oppressing. Go inhale glass you fucking aphobe.

I am a lesbian so I belong in the community, unlike heterosexuals ! As you said, oppressors don't belong in the same space of the people they are oppressing, that is why straight aro//ace people aren't a part of this community, hope that helps and cry harder <3

[onsomekindofstartrek]

I think fundamentally the lgbtq+ versus queer nomenclature debate comes down to this:

Are we better served by creating a new in-group, or by coming together in solidarity and recognition of the fact that, broadly, we belong to the out-group?

Assimilation is possible for some, not for all. I don’t think we can imagine a practical path to complete assimilation for everyone who wants it, and even then, it’s not desirable for everyone. The whole paradigm is frankly sort of imperial. “Become normal!” So that leaves either liberation or separatism, and I thank heavens that we’re not earnestly discussing separatism anymore. Leave that for the MRA’s.

And frankly the neat little package of “these identities in this list,” L and G and B and T and whatever we feel like tacking on the end “as a concession to the times” feels very assimilationist to me. It says “here’s a new in-group,” one that’s neatly defined so that we can push media representation and inclusion of these specific identities, as if they were a DLC for human society more broadly.

And that doesn’t work for me. That doesn’t work for someone who’s queer in four different ways. It doesn’t work for someone whose identity is difficult to even express to the cishet majority. Not everyone is so neat as to go into this math equation of a cultural movement a whole number of times with no remainder. Identifying yourself as “LGBTQ+” is an invitation for someone to ask “well, which one?” And what of the people who can’t answer in a way that’s concise, unambiguous and digestible?

For assimilationists, that’s inconvenient. For liberationists, our project is to make society tolerate us in spite of that.

So, while I might dislike the actual audible sound of the word “queer,” (it’s just an unpleasant combination of sounds, with some very unpleasant-sounding words just a few consonants away) I still say it’s the more useful term and the more useful political project. I don’t think the gender, sexual and romantic minorities, taken as a whole, are such a fancy club that it needs a goddamned list of who gets to be in it, let alone be named after that list in the form of an initialism. We’re… the weird people; the fucked-up people; the strangers.

(And I think when you’re reclaiming a slur taken from people who value conformity and strict social roles, for it to be a slur that literally means strange/weird/foreign is an incredibly strong and provocative posture.)

Frankly I have little interest in distinguishing between “real queers” and people with adjacent or shared interests who can stand in solidarity with us and do not harm our cause. Are cishet poly people queer? I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care.

Do they have a useful shared interest in changing romantic and sexual norms? Do they experience social rejection because of this practice or identity? These are more interesting and important questions. Unless you think that poly people are inherently child abusers or inherently cisnormative or heterosexist, which are all harmful stereotypes, you should be viewing them as potential allies if you cannot bring yourself to view them as members of the community. But of course some people apparently can’t bring themselves to call asexual and aromantic people LGBTQ+ or queer despite obvious shared oppression along common axes, so maybe I’m asking too much here.

And the same goes for other groups and other identities. I’m not interested in defining who “is queer.” I’m interested in who has shared interests with the queer community and who is willing to stand with that community when things get tough. When we fight intolerance and exclusion, it seems unwise to use as our weapons, intolerance and exclusion.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think either. I just think there are certain perspectives that aren’t going to help us in the long run, and making a little list of specific things the actual official name of our community is one of them.

[ms-spaghetti-j]

This is just a teenager's midnight whining. You can pass this by. I'm writing this to tell my feeling which i have been feeling lately to somebody because i cant stand it alone. I think all people around me(like my family, friends, and so on) can't understand it, and I'm sure that they'll criticize me.

When i was 12, I found the term “pansexual”. (I don't remember exactly how lol) at that time, I thought I'm pansexual. Because i have been feeling that i don't care the sex or gender of somebody I'm in love with since i don't know when. But now, i don't think I'm definitely pansexual.

All of my high school friends have somebody who they crush on. And every lunch time, they talk about them a lot. Every day. I don't hate my friends, their crushes. but one day, I realized I don't (or I shoud say can't) feel comfort while they talk about it. That's why I got to consider myself as a kind of aro/ace spectrum. Now, i guess maybe I'm aromantic(demiromantic?) and asexual( aegosexual?).

Also, sometimes i can't bear being woman. Or i should say i don't want to belong any king of gender. I don't want to be calld “girl”, “ms” jeremy, “she” or “her”. I don't want to wear skirts. Instead of it, i want to cut my hair short and wear pants like boys do.

Let me tell my experience.During my summer vacation, i went to an aquarium. At there, a staff gave me a questionnaire. I answered their questions, where i came from, my age, my opinions about the aquarium, and then, i found a question:

Which is your sex? M/F

I was shocked. Because…why should i tell my sex, or gender to just a fucking aquarium!?!?!? I went to an aquarium to see fishes!!! Not a hospital!!!! I think my sex or gender is nobody's business. So i didn't answer that question. Still now, i think it was stupid.

This experience made me think about my gender identity. Now, i consider myself as a kind of genderfluid, nonbinary, agender.

Now, I don't know what my sexuality and gender identity is. But im sure that I'll continue to think about it over and over in the future. For now, I can say that I'm questioning.

In case of there are somebody have read this long and difficult to read post, I'd like to say thankyou.

Thanks to all queer and ally people around the world, I can feel positive about myself! :) i love you guys❤🌈 goodnight greetings from japan, 1:20 am.

[whimsicalrutie]

old friend tried to argue with me about how she belonged to the lgbt+ community because she was an ally. and that the A in the acronym stood for ally girl if you don't shut the fuck up

the A stands for asexual and aromantic which are people who unlike her dumb ass do not fit the norm and need a safe space and a community where they feel seen

if you are cisgender and heterosexual you do not need a space within the queer community. if you want to be an ally you can do so without trying to infiltrate a space that wasn't created for you

when i found out i was queer gay marriage was still very much illegal. i got picked on at school for it. i still hide my identity from my family. i got harrassed in public and feared for my safety. but as soon as queer people want to celebrate and party you want in? y'all want to own everything damn

[inkfire-scribe]

For anyone who doesn't know what LGBTQ+ stands for, but are too embarrassed to ask and keep forgetting to google it:

Lesbian

Gay

Bisexual

Transgender

Queer/Questioning

Intersex

Asexual/Aromantic

And we like to slap a "+" on the end to remind everyone that there are lots of folk in our community that don't use any of these labels.

If you're wondering about the people that get really angry about how the A in LGBTQIA+ doesn't stand for "Ally," come here. Lean in close, that's right. You gotta understand this: our Whole Thing is 🌈inclusivity🌈. Regardless of what labels you use or don't, young or old, queer as fuck or straight as a ruler, everyone is welcome at Pride.

This does not mean that all queer spaces are open to anyone who wants to look inside! Supporting queer joy, defending queer folk wherever you can, spreading stories of queer success - please do! But Allies, please hear this; we need those spaces we feel safe in to be as free from rejection, judgement, and fear as possible. Society doesn't like us. Society tells us at every turn that we are wrong. We live under the constant, never-ceasing, inescapable question: What if they're right?

I have to have faith that someday, I'll heal enough from my trauma to finally say with confidence that they're wrong. I'm not "running away from my nature." I'm not "betraying God." I'm living my best, healthiest, happiest life with my beloved partner and our ever-increasing number of animals. I feel more deeply and securely myself than I ever have before, like I'm finally opening up and unfolding to feel the sun on my face.

So... yeah. :)

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[chubby-aphrodite]

I would love to hear about the list of fictional boyfriends bc you're so right about ghirahim

(This is in reference to my tags on this post, which read "#holds him by the neck #theres a reason you dont get to be on my list of fictional boyfriends #its because youre simply too much of a bitch to keep up with.")

THANK YOU.

So like. As you may know, I am aromantic and asexual, but I have a pronounced attraction to many fictional men! I've tried the whole dating thing once or twice, but it kind of makes my stomach flip in same kind of way that you might feel when you accidentally walk into the wrong classroom on the first day of class and you were already really really anxious so you just sit in the bathroom crying for like 20 minutes to try and hold yourself together. That kind of way.

But I like many fictional men in a way that might almost be described as romantic or sexual, but that's the catch with them: they're fictional. I can rotate them in my mind and then put them away because they're some guy someone made up. I also just have eyes that are not immune to aspects of visual design that are supposed to look Good™. I experience some level of aesthetic attraction, it's just that fictional characters can very easily be broken down into aesthetics. Real people kind of... can't.

So, without further ado... here we go.

Now, these aren't in any particular order, they're just in the order I added them. I actually keep a documented list.

Kirin Jindosh (Dishonored 2)

He's snarky and intelligent at the same time. He's a mechanical genius who built his own Clockwork Mansion (which was beautifully executed by the game designers). He built autonomous killer robots with such an attention to aesthetic. He was kicked out of college for causing an accident that's implied to have cost him his left thumb and forefinger, which he proceeded to replace with a ceramic prosthetic that doubles as a smoke pipe. He's tall and lanky and has a rakish charm to him that I just can't resist, and yet I can also see myself punching him directly in the face.

I always go nonlethal in Dishonored games, but doing that to Jindosh in particular fucking broke me. He's an asset to the villain because of his intellect and engineering prowess, so in order to neutralize him without killing him... you essentially lobotomize him. With an electric chair. That he designed himself to use on one of your allies. With the pull of a lever, that's all gone. He wakes up knowing that he used to know things, used to be able to make intricate creations, and realizing that he can't anymore. He's not even mad. He's just... sitting there, confused, with a sedate sadness about him. It literally made me fucking sob for a good five to ten minutes.

I learned a while ago that they had considered including a route where, instead of only having the options to kill him or lobotomize him, you'd just... skedaddle with your captured ally and leave him alone. But, this was cut due to budget constraints. They would've had to record voicelines and make versions of cutscenes for if he was alive and fully himself, but they didn't have the budget for it. I understand... but I'm still mournful of that.

Greed (Fullmental Alchemist, Manga/Brotherhood)

He is a tall man with sharp teeth, a black sleeveless turtleneck, and a cropped vest with a fur lined collar. He's a very interesting character that explores what it means to be "greedy" because the way it manifests through him is that he has a lot of friends and he loves them very much and he is extremely pissed if anything happens to them. He can also transform to have sharper teeth and CLAWS.

I'm very mindful of the version of Greed I talk about, however, because at one point he dies and gets his essence shoved into someone else to create a new Greed. It's just that this "someone else" is a 15 year old and I am Not About That. Had I gotten into FMA while I was still in my middle teens, I may have had a crush on Greedling, but as it stands I'm 22. So! Only the man who has his friends smash his head open for fun to demonstrate his immortality for me, please.

Adam Frankenstein (Frankenstein)

Okay. I'm gonna be real with you on this one. I've never read Frankenstein before. I should at some point. He's tall and stapled together and is described as beautiful and is actually very intelligent (if vindictive and vengeful). But this is entirely based on the fact that I had an erotic dream about him once. I'm not gonna describe it here, but rest assured... I don't know what I'm telling you to rest assuredly about.

Professor Venomous (OK KO)

A man with a penchant for sadism and was made sexy on purpose. He's extremely divorced. He's happily married. He's petty. He's got an even eviler alter ego to go with the fact that he's already evil. He's a whole bastard and a half. He's purple. He's even bisexual. I love him.

Leon (Pokemon Sword and Shield)

He is KIND and he is A LITTLE DUMB AT TIMES and he IS WEARING A TIGHT SPORTS UNIFORM FOR MOST OF THE GAME. He has more depth than some people give him credit for, and has a fun dynamic with Raihan. There's a moment where when you beat him in a battle, his losing animation shows him covering his face with his hat and gritting his teeth and almost shaking, but then he takes his off and he puts on a nice face like "Yeah, that was an awesome battle!" He can't actually be angry when he wants to be angry because he's The Champion (and later the head of the Battle Tower) and everyone has his eyes on him. His hair also looks very pullable.

Saïx (Kingdom Hearts)

So this is kind of an OG fictional boyfriend for me. He was one of the first characters I ever sought out character/reader fics for. If you know me, you know I have a thing for both vampires and werewolves, and Saïx is sort of a diet werewolf. He has a moon motif and can turn more... wild and angry. I like a man who is measured in most of what he does and says, but when he loses it, he fucking LOSES IT. He's also (say it with me now) TALL!

The kicker here is that I've only played two KH games (re:coded and Dream Drop Distance). I was just so sucked in my the fandom as a tween that the men I was interested stayed with me even now.

Qrow Branwen (RWBY)

So, fun fact about this one: before I started watching RWBY, one of my friends pegged me as the sort of person who would be a Qrow Fucker right away. And they were right. He's a conflicted man whose source of pain is himself and how he thinks he makes life worse for everyone around him.

The Assigned Power that he has is literally bad luck. Bad things that happen around or to him that most would just ascribe to simple chance happen with increasing frequency around him. He's afraid he'll get the people he cares about hurt, so he pushes them away to avoid that. Bad things constantly happen to him, so he's driven to drink. He puts on a sarcastic and nonchalant facade about it, but he's just a lonely man whose self loathing is so far up his own ass that he almost actually got people killed because he drank himself into a stupor and couldn't help them.

Punchable, but also a sopping wet cat of a man. It also helps that he's mildly disheveled and a little flirty on purpose.

Guzma (Pokemon Sun and Moon)

YA BOY. Man just likes bugs and wants to give people a place to go. I enjoy imagining what he'd sound like because it's an accent I can actually do. A crusty weirdo with a soft and gooey interior. Very emotive and up front. I like a man with confidence.

Ganondorf (Zelda)

I'd just like to say I was a Ganonfucker before TotK. His original incarnation from Ocarina of Time is LITERALLY out there wearing a skin tight leather leotard, thigh high leather boots, and a tights. His subsequent incarnations also all have very compelling things going for them, too.

Winder Waker Ganondorf had a thought out, sympathetic motivation that became warped by his inescapable lust for power, dooming him. And he has his moms' names printed on his swords, which is adorable. Twilight Princess Ganondorf is genuinely terrifying, resisting his divinely powered execution squad and masterminding a takeover of the very realm meant to be his prison. He also has an excellent design. Shoutout to Hyrule Warriors Ganondorf for also having an excellent design. And finally, his Tears of the Kingdom incarnation combines an also-incredible-design with a very, VERY powerful presence.

I love his very harsh features and also I want to bury my face in his chest.

Sidon (Zelda)

What can I say about him that hasn't already been said? He's kind. He's handsome. He believes in you. He's enormous. He loves his sister. He loves his wife. He loves Link. He's even got sharp teeth.

Side tangent time because I love dumping this on people and if you've read this far you're in for the long haul already: sharks don't really have two dicks like we typically think of them. They have a pair of something called claspers, one of which is left out in the water and the other is inserted into the other shark. The left out one pumps in seawater while the other one expels water and sperm, fastened inside the other shark by the grace of the fact that it can unfurl like an umbrella. Sharks don't have dicks. They have jizz hoses attached to their crotches. I learned this (most of it anyway, the rest was filled in via Wikipedia) in the marine biology class I took in high school because I thought it would be fun and I didn't wanna take normal biology. Thank you for coming to my impromptu lecture on shark dicks.

Axel (Kingdom Hearts)

Axel has much the same story as Saïx with regards to his relation to me. I was into the Kingdom Hearts fandom as a tween and he just stuck with me. I enjoy the fact that he's cool and a bit sassy and I love his friendship with Roxas and Xion. It's nice.

Alucard (Castlevania)

Disclaimer: I've only played one Castlevania game (and it wasn't even a good one) and watched only a few episodes of the show. But by GOD this man is good for me. Tall angsty vampire with long pretty hair and a really cool outfit. Shoutout to Ayami Kojima's art.

Dunban (Xenoblade Chronicles)

Dunban is an incredible man. He lost the use of his right arm entirely due to the god in the sword he was using at the time rejecting him, and yet he still used that sword successfully to defend his home from an onslaught of man-eating robots. A year on from that, he learns to wield a sword one handed in his non-dominant hand, and is just generally a badass.

Tales of his heroism spread far and wide, even to more isolationist corners of the world—enough so that when he visited those isolationist areas, he could leverage his reputation to make people of a much higher societal rank than him listen to him. Essentially, he's talking to the prince of a kingdom, and the prince tells him he can't do something because of X or Y esoteric law relating to the traditions of their people (even though he understands they're odd to outsiders). Dunban, in all his cleverness, essentially just goes "Let's do it anyway because it's the right thing to do, and if anyone gets in trouble we can just say we're weird outsiders who don't know your laws, yeah?" but with better wording and more emotion. At this point, the prince, who is of a long-lived race and is literally five times Dunban's age, essentially yes sir's him.

I also just love his voice. One of his voice lines for one of his abilities is just a really guttural, growly "Dance with me" and I love it.

Grimsley (Pokemon Black and White)

Depressed man in a suit with a vampire-ish appearance. Then has a later appearance where he looks aged by stress. That is all.

Volo (Pokemon Legends Arceus)

Oh fucking BOY I am not normal about this man. He is kind and passionate and has an insatiable hunger for knowledge, but the knowledge he's accumulated has made him seek out the power of a god. A power he can't have. In spite of the stupid Arceus-shaped hair, he manages to have such a gravitas in his final battle. The beady eyes. His casual half-smile turned sinister. The music that plays being a remix of the most feared trainer in Pokemon history, to whom he is implied to be directly related to. The fact that he fucking cheats and pulls out not only a seventh Pokemon, but the fact that that Pokemon pulls a "YOU FOOL, THAT WAS ONLY MY FIRST HEALTH BAR!" The way he goes through Laventon to avoid talking to you again in order to tell you that Giratina wants to help you. The ease with which you can give him spine crushing trauma through a combination of religion and retail. I've literally written a volo/reader fic and am working on another, longer one. I love him.

Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts)

On my journey out of tweenhood and into being a teenager, I became slowly more interested in villains as times went on. Vanitas was one of my first and most powerful instances of that. He's an evil doppelganger to one of the protagonists created out of the darkness in the heart of another. He's cool. He's angry. He's very enjoyable to me.

Consul N (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)

Oh boy, another one I'm incapable of being fucking normal about! I've posted about him at length in other posts, but the general gist of my obsession with this man is... his obsession. His devotion. He's so strongly attached to the one he loves that, after repeatedly having her ripped away from him, he chooses to perpetuate the miserable world that so violently tortured them both on the condition that he could be with her forever. He looses himself in his possessiveness, he wants to believe he's doing it all for her—but deep down, he knows he chose the coward's way out by abandoning his hopes and dreams and choosing to become the boot that keeps the world down rather than topple the system that won't let it rise.

And that's how the story of XC3 starts: his cast of hopes and dreams—and those of the woman he loves—coalesce into a new existence that hasn't suffered the many existences he had—that they both had. And that coalition of their hopes and dreams finally, finally manages to set the world right, after much fighting and suffering and introspection. At one point, he physically and emotionally tortures the embodiment of his hopes and dreams as if to prove to himself that what the way he's been doing things was the only way. But later, his hopes-and-dreams self literally tells him that he's a coward and that he's full of shit. I was so enraptured by this scene that I had to make art of it, of N leaning against the bars of a jail cell as he emotionally tortures his other self, and it became my profile pic.

Commander Isurd (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)

This man is so fucking stressed out that the quest you do to help him be more powerful is trying to find him a way to relax, and there's a scene where he strips and sits in a hot spring. He is a man whose heart is so full of grief that he won't let himself process. I've described his eyebags as harrowing before, because there's no other better word for them. Let him rest. I want to help him rest.

Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII)

The disclaimer here is that I've never played a Final Fantasy game, let alone any incarnation of VII, I just find this man fascinating. He has three dads who are all pointing guns at each other and as well as two moms. He was injected with alien DNA in the womb, raised as an orphan, and groomed to be the perfect supersoldier. When he found this out as an adult, he went on a rampage and did a lot of terrible things including trying to explode the world. But before that, he was just kind of a guy put under both a spotlight and a microscope, and all that culminated in incredible violence. Also I like one winged angel.

Grusha (Pokemon Scarlet and Violet)

He's just very pretty and I like his attitude. I'm also intrigued by his implied angsty backstory.

Spyke (Splatoon)

I'm simply a sucker for vaguely mysterious tall men. I don't know why they gave him some kinda cockney accent in the American English localization only, but I'm frankly here for it.

Vash the Stampede (Trigun)

I've also been posting about this one at length. He's a very kind man to the point of accepting personal injury if it means he doesn't have to hurt someone, and it shows. He's goofy as hell. He menaces people into being nice to each other through the force of his (falsely) violent reputation alone. He loves his brother so much, he just wishes he would stop being an asshole. He believes in the human capacity for change. He represses his emotions and puts up a facade so that he doesn't hurt the people around him, even though he tries to push them away anyway. He's tall. He's got some cool alien/monster traits. He's also just cool as hell. He's a mama's boy. He's even into petplay. I love him!

Conclusion

I love all my hims.

[unforth]

So I am myself asexual (and aromantic and agender) but I think yall need to understand the generation gap here.

When I was growing up in the 90s, the A virtually always stood for ally. I never even heard the term asexual until I got on Tumblr in 2012, and I was in fucking New York City, not some weird backwater. The wave of asexual awareness is very recent. My high school's queer kid club circa 1996 was literally called GLASS which stood for Gays, Lesbians, And Straight Supporters.

To me, the "the A has always and must always stand for asexual" discourse is like telling some 60 year old dude that he's not allowed to call himself transsexual. It's old terminology but it's still an essential and relevant part of our overarching queer community. As a certified Oldie, ally was a common and lauded term for most of my life.

Now? In my genuine opinion the A stands for Asexual (and Aro/Agender). And if someone says it ONLY stands for Ally, they can go fuck themselves, but if someone says it's both? There's never anything wrong with making the tent bigger. We need Allies and it's okay to include them. I will punch the fucker who says my supportive cishet parents aren't allowed at events to support my family. Allowing in allied straights is essential coalition building.

For fuck's sake people there are so many better and more important things we can be arguing about.

"Cishets are trying to invade our spaces" are you guys fucking insane?

One reason this always devolves into arguments is that denying allyhood forces out people who have literally been here the whole time, often longer than some of yall have been alive. My mother was raising money for AIDs research, with kid-me at her side, in 1990. Her and people like her... They have always been here, helping and supporting. They are as much a part of our community as you. So fucking stop it.

What do you think about the 'A' in LGBTQIA+ also standing for Ally?

Feel free to elaborate on your answer

[geraniumsandheliotropes]