sparkdragon42 - Tumblr blog

[sparkdragon42]

My (late) contribution for Make A Terrible Comic Day! I've been going to the library more often lately so this has been coming up a lot, cause I want something to read but have had trouble finding anything that I'm comfortable with.

If anyone has recommendations please please let me know because I am struggling.

[sparkdragon42]

It's always a bit... annoying? Weird? Idk. Whenever a person who isn't AroAllo comes into the tags and asks a questions for AroAllos (which is fine), that there's always aces in the notes responding with something like "I'm ace/asexual but..."

No "but" this question isn't for you?? Why do you feel so comfortable talking over AlloAros in our own spaces??

It's weird. How can you read "Question for AroAllos!" or anything similar and think to yourself "well, I'm not that, but I'll still answer!" Why? Why can't you just... not do that? Especially when it's a question specifically about sex or sexual attraction and you just derail it into something completely different, especially something explicitly non-sexual?? What is the thought process there. Genuinely, I cannot understand this.

Maybe just let AlloAros answer. You'll live if you scroll past the question or just reblog without comment or tag an AroAllo person who's open to answering questions (and if you can't even name one, just... perhaps... don't even think about answering the question) or do anything but speak over AlloAros. I promise. It'll be fine. We don't need you talking over us, and we certainly don't need you to keep spreading misinformation (which is something that happens basically every time, even if you don’t mean to).

We can talk for ourselves just fine. If you actually want to help, listen to us, and spread our voices instead of talking over us.

[sparkdragon42]

I'm gonna use the left one :D

Go forth my children

[sparkdragon42]

I'm only just realising I might be #AceSpec now at the age of 40, so take this with a grain of salt, but...

It's going to be OK. I've been meeting platonic partners through the apps & queer community for decades now, and it's absolutely possible. We spend years nerding about food, tea, maths, and sound technology. I set up cohabitation, co-parenting, support networks.

It's terrifying when you're young and isolated. But just be the best person you can be. If you want to be an island, rock on. If you want community, being your best self will attract who you need.

And goddamn, you're going have a smashing time while you're at it, because you rock.

[sparkdragon42]

I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".

[sparkdragon42]

I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

[sparkdragon42]

me: does an am I ace quiz

Quiz: you are definitely ace, every answer you had points towards it, you could not be more ace, you literally said you never want to have sex

me: but what if I’m not does research on being ace

Google: all of these things describe you, you definitely are

Me: what if I’m just confused, and this is just a phase

Artemis: slamming head into table

[sparkdragon42]

when i say im aroace i just mean im on the aroace spectrum bitch idk where on it i am idk if im greysexual asexual demiromantic aromantic idfk lolol all i know is i feel little to no sexual and romantic attraction. its a very general way of just saying that.

update 9/12/24: i see this post is resonating with alot of people. i made this at a time where i was questioning my asexuality/aromantcism, now im pretty sure im 100% aroace and im indifferent to either. that being said i wish u all a safe and fulfilling self exploration journey whereever u are on the spectrum.

[sparkdragon42]

Tumblr: Isn't it funny how Japanese light novels have such improbably long titles? Isn't it weird?

English literature for most of the 17th–19th Centuries:

[Image description – A photograph of a book published in 1810, whose title reads, in full: "A Reviving Cordial for a Sin-Sick Despairing Soul, in the Time of Temptation, Being an Account of the Miraculous Preservation of the Author’s Bodily Life From Many Imminent Dangers; and of the Way in Which the Spirit of God Effected the Deliverance Of His Soul From the State of Nature to the State of Grace. To Which Is Subjoined, the Only Refuge of a Troubled Soul, in the Time of Tribulation and Affliction; or, The Mystery of the Apple-Tree, Explained and Laid Open, in Two Discourses From Cant. ii. 3", by the Rev. James Barry, Minister of the Gospel.]

[sparkdragon42]

shoutout to my friend Lily, who’s becoming my wingwoman so that I can have a queerplatonic relationship

I want this to get a bunch of notes so I can tell her she’s tumblr famous

[sparkdragon42]

shoutout to my friend Lily, who’s becoming my wingwoman so that I can have a queerplatonic relationship

I want this to get a bunch of notes so I can tell her she’s tumblr famous

[sparkdragon42]

shoutout to my friend Lily, who’s becoming my wingwoman so that I can have a queerplatonic relationship

I want this to get a bunch of notes so I can tell her she’s tumblr famous

[sparkdragon42]

there's something so profoundly isolating about being aromantic, but not asexual. because every aromantic experience is boldly labeled an "aroace experience", or even just an "asexual experience", even when it has nothing to do with asexuality. there's no room for non-asexual aromanticism to exist. so you learn to avoid all of it.

the aromantic tag is filled with posts about asexuality, so you learn to not explore it. other aspecs assume you're asexual or imply that you "should" be, so you learn to avoid aspec spaces. other queer people accuse you of emotional abuse on the basis of your identity, so you learn to avoid queer spaces.

it doesn't feel like there's any space out there for us, any support that isn't pulled out from under us the second we say "hey, um, actually, i'm just aromantic, not aroace."

[sparkdragon42]

there's something so profoundly isolating about being aromantic, but not asexual. because every aromantic experience is boldly labeled an "aroace experience", or even just an "asexual experience", even when it has nothing to do with asexuality. there's no room for non-asexual aromanticism to exist. so you learn to avoid all of it.

the aromantic tag is filled with posts about asexuality, so you learn to not explore it. other aspecs assume you're asexual or imply that you "should" be, so you learn to avoid aspec spaces. other queer people accuse you of emotional abuse on the basis of your identity, so you learn to avoid queer spaces.

it doesn't feel like there's any space out there for us, any support that isn't pulled out from under us the second we say "hey, um, actually, i'm just aromantic, not aroace."

[sparkdragon42]

[image ID: the tag #aroallo with 1.7k followers. the shown top post in the tag is a blinkie with the asexual flag. end ID]

this might sound mean but i am genuinely sick and tired of the aroallo tag consistently being topped by general spam-tagged aspec posts that aren’t even about aromantic allosexual topics. like the point is that we’re not ace. that’s kind of the whole thing. and i went to that post (which is tagged aroallo!!) and they don’t even have the fucking aroallo flag blinkie on there. stop using our tag if you won’t include our flag

[sparkdragon42]

Reminder that aroallo people exist. Stop shaming them for wanting to have sex. Adults can consent, and having sex without wanting/having a romantic relationship is okay.

[sparkdragon42]