#and for apl aros that connection is literally just

[papercranesandpride]

I find it so difficult to be aro, apl, afam, and repulsed in all directions. The only way I can actually connect with someone is through sex, I'm introverted and don't like small talk. But most people aren't willing to just have sex with anyone the way they'd just be friends with anyone or even just go on a date to see what happens, even if they think it won't go anywhere. So I'm just cripplingly lonely literally all the time. It doesn't help that I'm an ugly balding straight trans guy and straight women are the pickiest bitches ever

So fun fact, anon: women generally don't like to have sex with people who casually call them "bitches." Being trans and aspec doesn't mean you can't still be an incel. Try respecting woman and seeing them as humans (and no, that doesn't need to mean being friends with them) and you might have more luck.

Anyway if anyone else seeing this is having trouble finding people who want casual sex, and they are either trans or mlm, my recommendation is grindr. And yes, this does still work if you're a straight trans person. It's only if you're cis and exclusively into women that you can't be on there. Which really, really sucks for cishet male and lesbian aroallos. But if you're a straight trans woman? Loads of bi guys. Straight trans man? Lots of trans girls.

That said trans girls especially deserve better than misogyny and will probably see that you're a walking red flag. I'd bet a lot of money that that's the real reason people won't sleep with you. Lots of bald guys get laid. Those ones don't go around denegrading the group of people they're trying to have sex with.

[variousqueerthings]

ive been enabled (thank youuu and also thank you @pigtailedgirl), so first post goes something like this:

Introductions, because i always think it's good to reiterate what aspec can encompass, as many people tend to think it closes doors rather than opens them in many a varied (queer) direction

aspec encompasses the entire a-spectrum, including (but not limited to) asexual (as an umbrella term), aromantic (as an umbrella term), loveless, aplatonic (as an umbrella term), and demi (which can also go under ace-and-aro-and-apl). for example, one could read fraser as asexual alloromantic (not sexually attracted, but romantically) which could or could not include a desire for sex in and of itself (i wouldn't personally think he's sex favourable, but like... i could buy sex neutral). one could read fraser as grey-ace demi-romantic loveless (very rarely sexually attracted, only desiring a romantic connection with someone off the back of an already strong long-lasting connection, and not basing his relationships in whether or not he loves a person, whether or not he considers that he "feels" love or not). many more reads. many ways to also take these terms in fluid directions beyond what i just wrote

the main idea behind reading a character as aspec is that it responds to non-normative ideas included in the text about sex, romance, and friendship. these can often be arrived to via the language of absence -- that is, people don't know the language about it and in the past didn't even have words to describe the feeling necessarily -- which means one can look at characters that do canonically have sex, get into romantic and platonic relationships, and go: "but what would it look like if we skewed this to the left. what are the semiotics here?"

and then, with characters like fraser, there's really not a lot of over-reading to do, on the whole. there's just. there's a lot of queer non-normative subtext (and text) to how fraser engages with love, romance, sex, and friendship

some fraser things: fraser canonically gets distressed or doesn't notice when getting hit on, canonically muses on what love is and whether he's ever really "felt" it, canonically gets into forms of relationships with women who give him orders and like pushing him about (in the first case in a literal and also canonically manipulative way, in the second at first in a "i don't like you" and then in kind of a sexy roleplay way) which at least in the first one (so far, i haven't seen the latter two seasons yet) includes sex in some capacity (although i read that as... somewhat dubcon, considering fraser's state of mind, but that, another post on that), canonically hasn't had real "friends" in his life, and does things like call ray his "best friend" after knowing him a very short time, canonically doesn't feel distressed at the very idea of kink (whether or not he would knowingly participate is more up in the air), canonically is very chill (and even excited) about the idea of crossdressing, canonically has a philosophy about helping pretty much every person that needs it (even saves gerrard and frankie when it comes to it)

so there are a lot of non-normative ways of looking at the world and political and personal relationships that fit within an aspec theoretical framework, and also a lot of reading of fraser's state of being that can be effectively summed up as "does this man know who he is and what he wants beyond the very specific script/code of honour he has to adhere to"?

whether or not one ships fraser in any direction, reads him as actively wanting to have sex, romantic monogamous or polyamorous relationships, into men or women or both and beyond... it doesn't really negate an aspec read. aspec is a whole other paradigm of reading characters that goes a bit beyond shipping and who they may or may not have sex with, which is one of the many things that really draws me to it as a lens through which to read characters

and like.... my baby boy benton fraser.... the most eligible bachelor in chicago... his way of looking at the world is so incredibly other to every single character around him (and indeed, to what i have seen in most other narratives) that he's already fulfilling aspec criteria simply by what is already there (the very asking what love is and looking for guidance on that is aspec in nature), i don't just look at absence this time, i look at textual and subtextual presence, which is. so rare. so so rare. listen. characters being given this many aspec traits is a Gift and i am going to spend as long as i can unpacking it!

the rest is simply playing with different versions of what that can look like, both for his personal relationships and his philosophies and politics about what sort of person he wants to be in the world, with other people

it's, imo, going an extra level into his character and not assuming allosexual and alloromantic and alloplatonic as default for being, especially when fraser-as-character is written to not be the default (albeit, not the default in the body of a michelangelo statue, but he can't help that). this man moves through the world so differently that people have an instinctive reaction to it, even when he's not, ostensibly, doing anything. which is a fun place to start, personally, with this character specifically. why is everyone scrutinising him so intently for simply being? why can they not put their finger on what makes him so... different?

am shocked that ace!fraser seems to be a not-so-common take, he's literally one of the most asexually written characters ive ever seen on a tv screen, he's up there with bojack horseman's todd.

[indigo-brainspark]

My school has these lockers which require individual keys to open the locks. If you lose the key, there's no master key to get inside to your books, so you need to keep a close eye on that really small key, because if you don't, you're never getting into your locker again until someone is brought in with a sledgehammer.

There is one other solution though. Some of the students have keys that manage to open another person's locker. Not a random person's locker. Just that the build of the key was similar enough to open one other lock in the whole grade. If you lose your key, you just need to find the one (or two) specific people in your grade which has a key that can open your locker so that you don't fail. Then, once you find them, you end up having to be nice to each other because if either of you forget your keys, then your grades are resting on the other person's goodwill. Or get the sledgehammer guy, but who cares?

So, where am I going with this??? Hear me out: Not-Inherently-Romantic/Monogamous Soulmate AU, where your soulmate(s) coincidentally just always happen to have keys that are able to open your locks as well. The locks are restricted to only the type of locks that are cheap, mass-produced, somewhat breakable and not meant to be high-security, that way there's plausible deniability on how you keep on getting the same linked pairs of keys.