aromantic-pantyanarchy

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

As a mediocre guy with anxiety and self-esteem issues, should I also adopt the confidence of a mediocre man or is that just adding to the problem?

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

“i wanna be loved not lusted-“

fuck you i wanna be lusted not loved. god forbid someone love me. gross.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

Saw someone call New PSG a gooner bait show "but fine, I can accept it." Then within the same breath say that they appreciate being catered to by showing off guys with muscles.

I dunno, I've been thinking about the tonal differences in having the Poly brothers' transformation be based on Chippendale dancers, that the exaggerated hip thrusts, costuming and posing might add a layer of protective irony that simply isn't present with the women characters' pole dancing. Is it even possible to actually sexualize men in a culture where the male gaze is default, I've been thinking about this a lot.

This is stuff worth talking about and criticizing but "gooner bait" cannot just be sexuality that you don't like.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

How did you...

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

Instead of gendering anatomical features, use the direct pronouns 'I' or 'you' to make your advice sound comically specific. I have something called a refractory period. You need to check your breasts regularly for suspicious lumps. Is this helpful? Questionable. But it's kinda funny.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

im joining the war on gross disgusting pornographic content on the side of gross disgusting pornographic content

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

We love desperately courting a queer audience without actually including any queer content.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

aroallos are so cool btw did you know that.

did you know that sex and sexual attraction isn’t inherently romantic? and that the two don’t have to be intertwined? i think everyone should know this.

aroallos are splendid and demonizing them or labeling them as abusive monsters in relationships because they don’t love romantically is really weird and bad btw. aroallos are still queer, and denying that is WEIRD.

i hope all the aroallos have a splendid and fantastic day.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

Watching a series with a character you ID as aro can be like playing roulette of crushing disappointment and always betting on 0, all this to say that I really appreciate that when New PSG made an episode paralleling Ghost, it was about Panty adopting a ghost cat instead.

I keep meaning to like, talk a bit about why this blog is named after Panty Anarchy, why I feel a connection to this character, especially when a lot of aspects of the show are kinda messy and it’d be charitable to say they haven’t aged well. I want to talk about that and with V-Day upon us all I’d like to talk about it now.

I always say that PSG is my favorite show that I can’t stand a quarter of, cause the back half gets a little rough before the finale. Out of 13 total dual episodes, by 8B you can already see they’re running out of budget, 9A is even cheaper, 10 in its entirety is nearly unwatchable imo, and 11B, while I like it, is a bottle episode where nothing happens and I do know people who’ve complained about that.

And right smack dab in the middle of all that mess is episode 9B. Ghost: The Phantom of Daten City. The plot of this episode is that Stocking has fallen in love with a ghost, at first sight even, the very creatures that the pair were sent to this Earth to kill. Not just any ghost too, but a vulgar, unhygienic, stinky, rude, childish, sexist, constantly farting bachelor ghost.

This episode, it must be stressed, is a mess. Despite the whole show being a comedy, it’s really hard to parse whether this setup is meant to be a joke, it’s played as a joke but the tone is deadly serious, and it’s the one time in the show that the low-key semi-acoustic love jam CHOCOLAT plays. Throughout the episode the average viewer, especially me, is struggling and failing to figure out what’s going on and why, if there’s a punchline where is it, if there’s an explanation what is it. I’ve seen theories about what they were trying to do with this concept, that it’s supposed to be a play off of Stocking’s masochism or something, but the episode itself offers no answers and no resolution. The ending is that Stocking was genuinely in love and through her love was able to help the bachelor ghost find peace.

Throughout the entire episode Panty is openly grossed out by this relationship and attempts to confront Stocking multiple times, saying things like “I know it’s not about his looks, I get that you’re not in love with the smell or the fat or the warts, it’s who he is and shit, right?” The confrontation escalates until, when Stocking plans to run off and elope with the ghost, Panty disguises herself to kill him quick and get the entire episode over with. Stocking catches on and stops her. And then she says the line.

“You wouldn’t understand, you’re too busy fucking to know what love is.”

And that’s the moment it all clicks into place for me.

I can’t imagine it was intentional, I have no idea what the showrunners were trying to do, but from my own perspective it’s almost impossible not to read into the events of the episode from an aromantic lens. The relationship makes no sense, I can’t tell if it’s a bit or if there’s some detail that I’m missing, but logically, emotionally, this coupling does not compute, it doesn’t follow the rules as I understand them, it makes no sense. And, while never to this level, that’s basically how I feel about most romantic relationships, I can pick out social cues and chemistries to follow along, but on a fundamental level I cannot and will never be able to wholly make sense of it.

I’ve complained on this blog before about a lot of the canon aromantic character roster, a big part of why I’ve never been able to connect to most of them is because their aromanticism is hardly ever explored, it’s mentioned in a line or hinted at in canon then confirmed on twitter, if even that, but the functional reality of the character’s aromanticism is taking them off the shipping board and then moving on. What Panty and Stocking did in this one episode was use filmic language, objective storytelling techniques, to speak to my experiences, it’s one of the few times I’ve felt seen and spoken to in this kind of way.

The episode continues, Panty responds to this by saying “I may not know what love is, but that sharter doesn’t either, he treats you like ass!” and then it’s revealed that actually deep down he did care for her, and then Panty vomits, either from the smell or the display of affection. She fights against their relationship to the end, and only after being held back so that the ghost can ascend does the whole sordid affair end, and even to the end Panty can’t show affection to the man who stole her sister’s heart. In the episode’s epilogue she, depending on your interpretation, either tries to connect with Stocking over the events in her own Panty way, or is just making fun of her for it. “It’s time to go kill some ghosts, I’ll even let you bang a few if you hurry.” To the end she doesn’t understand, she can attempt to connect to it from her own relationship to relationships, but can’t reach the actual emotions Stocking was feeling, neither can I, and the episode ends.

And that is why I like Panty Anarchy, and PSG as a whole, why Panty is among my favorite fictional characters, and why I connect so heavily to a weird late-season episode that was paired with a flash-tween-centric fanservice beach episode.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

Masculinity is a prison to you. I on the other hand am frolicking in it like a beautiful meadow.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

I still remember how everybody mocked the queerplatonic label because it was 'just being friends'. Even if you treat them as overlapping categories, considering that the umbrella of friendship goes from 'we are classmates and had coffee once' to 'I cannot imagine my life without this person in it', I cannot in good faith object to someone needing the specificity of a new term.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

Personally I don't really understand why we are so anti-solidarity these days, but I don't like it.

"I relate to your struggle because it sounds similar to my struggle, therefore I want to help you with this the way I would have wanted to be helped myself" is pretty much the baseline of allyship. For whatever reason, though, it's almost become a matter of stolen valor and stealing the spotlight, and frequently I see it rejected outright.

I just don't get it. Personally I am thrilled when someone who Isn't Like Me reaches out to share help or even just an encouragement. I don't really see it as an out group "making it about themselves" if they're just trying to say they've experienced similar and sympathize.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

Ok I know aro posts being tagged as aroace is annoying but also. Aromanticism is very much part of the aroace experience ? Unless the post is specifically about allosexual aromantic I think it's kind of weird to police other aspecs' tagging system about their own identity. I get the annoyance of people tagging posts relating to your identity in a way you don't relate to but also it's just such a non issue. 'why is this post tagged aroace when there's no mention of asexuality?' well maybe because aroace people are aromantic too idk.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

"Single people are on average less healthy, less financially stable, and overall less satisfied with life than partnered and married people are. This must mean that monogamous relationships and marriage are the solution to society's problems"

Huh, it's almost like society, both socially and financially, is set up to specifically benefit people who have monogamous relationships and get married and punish people who don't partner or get married. It's almost like there are financial benefits that exist specifically to incentivize people to get married and have kids and be a nuclear family. It's almost like it was very culturally normal until very very very recently to just not have any deeper platonic relationships after you get married, meaning that single people past a certain age just get left behind and get treated as spinsters or loser bachelors. It's like life just is not designed for single people to be able to easily participate and survive while still being single. Huh, very weird. I'm sure marriage will fix this.

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

I so so so hate the "soulmate" trope where "everyone has a soulmate." And, no, people going "oh look at these friends who are soulmates! I'm so inclusive to aspecs!" just. Do. Not. Get it. And they won't! They don't get that the issue isn't the romance or whatever of soulmates, it's the implication that everyone must partner up, even if it's with a qpp or friend or whatever. Nope! I'm not partnering! I don't care for your amatonormativity! And yes you "replacing" romance with a friend or qpp is still amatonormativity because I don't trust that you don't see those as Romance Lite(tm) in this context! And I bitterly resent the implication that I am fundamentally less human--literally missing part of my soul--because I don't want a partner. So yeah culturally it is soooo time to get over fucking "soulmates."

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

"aros can still date" well i don't want to. "aros can be in qprs" well i don't want to. "aros can still get married" i cannot stress enough how much i don't want to do that. "it can be completely platonic" i don't care i still don't want to. "aros can still go on dates and kiss people and act indistinguishably from an alloromantic person" why are you so hell bent on us fitting into amatonormative society as much as possible. "aros can still love" is this just to make you feel better? it feels like it's just to make you feel better

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

I appreciate all the posts breaking down why the myth of the cis aro man is not some infiltrating boogeyman but it can be very strange to see someone talk about you as an abstract hypothetical.