#I'm engaged but I'm also single but I'm also hopelessly in love

[cherieprincess]

so,,,,, are you a big tiddy gf?

I'll do you one better

I am in fact a big tiddy goth gf

[kazylgon]

1, 5, 12 for each of your OCs for the ask game! :3

:3c

hoo boy this got kinda long

1. Who are they closest to? How did they meet and what do they like to do together?

(lots of broad strokes for this one because i'm still figuring a lot of these details out)

Rin: NO ONE. Rin is close to NO ONE. She is a LONE WOLF who doesn't need ANYBODY!... It's Talynn, but she'll never admit it. They met when Talynn got caught up in a crime Rin committed, likely some kind of theft. Rin was getting chased by authorities, passed off the stolen goods to Talynn to get away, Talynn ran, and Rin later tracked her down later to get her stuff back. They've been unable to get rid of each other ever since. Their favourite things to do together are getting into trouble/literally anything other than that depending on who you ask.

Talynn: Her parents. They were Mighty Heroes and the moments she cherished the most were when they'd hold her close, let her hold their weapons, and tell her stories based on their exploits.

Scraps: Physically? Rin, Talynn, and Zedd. Emotionally? No one. Scraps does not care for people beyond how they can contribute to Scraps' experiments.

Zedd: The first thing Zedd remembers is waking up in a hole in the ground and wandering along the nearest road until he was taken in by a family of traveling tinkers. They taught him everything he knows about people, the world, morality, and so on. He stayed with them for several months until they arrived at the first big city he'd encountered, at which point he got hopelessly lost for several weeks and by the time he regained his bearings they'd moved on. He loved playing hide and seek with the family's two children (he was amazing at hiding, terrible at seeking) and "helping" their parents with their tinkering work. (His help was quickly reduced to 'hold the pliers, sit over there, and hand me the pliers when I ask for them' but it was still important work in his mind)

5. How affectionate are they? What are their top love languages?

Rin: Not very. She was conceived and raised for the sole purpose of serving as a magical battery for her mother, then ran away and lived on the streets of various cities, so her emotional availability to give and receive affection is...basically zero. Rin spending any time with someone without having a plan to escape and/or murder them is serious affection coming from her.

Talynn: Touch and acts of service. Talynn wants to hug everyone and run her fingers through their hair and do whatever she can to make their lives easier. She wants to be the kitten right at the centre of the big kitty pile. But she has self worth issues, and occasionally transforms into a barely controllable monster with a hunger for warm flesh. So she rarely indulges in giving/receiving affection for fear of not being deserving of it and/or horribly maiming the person she's getting close to.

Scraps: Scraps can seem very affectionate. Scraps will curl up on people's laps at a moment's notice the instant the temperature starts dropping, and Scraps will show interest in whatever it is someone is doing and will seem engaged and ask all manner of questions, and various other things that might seem affectionate. But there's no emotional component to this. Literally every single thing Scraps does is to serve their own survival and further their own knowledge/experiments. The closest thing Scraps has to a love language is involving someone in an experiment while also ensuring said person doesn't get horribly maimed.

Zedd: There's so much affection in this idiot. He just wants to be loved and love other people in turn, doesn't matter the love language. If you express affection at him he will return in in the same way tenfold. Give him a gift and you'll start finding your pockets filled with all manner of random stuff that reminded him of you. Perform an act of service for him and you could ask him to kill someone for you and he'll probably do it if you say please a few times.

12. Are they hot-headed or even-tempered? What frustrates them the most?

Rin: The hottest of hot heads. Emotional regulation? Fuck off and die. Anger is a binary setting for her; she's either not angry and everything is fine, or she's angry and someone might die. Her biggest frustration? People trying to control or manipulate her. You try and gaslight her and the only light being shed will be from your body after she sets you on fire.

Talynn: She seems very cool and in control and even tempered but that's mostly just the dissociation. There's such a chasm between Talynn and her emotions (because of the whole turning into a flesh eating monster when angry or scared) because she's trying so very, very hard to not feel anything. She can deal with any frustration almost indefinitely as long as it's coming from an external source, but the second it comes from herself or her own thoughts or actions it's a major source of frustration, the flesh eating monster thing is undoubtedly her biggest frustration in life.

Scraps: Scraps approaches every situation in life with the same calm, cold logic. Scraps is in perfect control of Scraps' emotions at all times. Nothing frustrates Scraps, every possible frustration is just another exciting puzzle to solve.

Zedd: He's very even tempered in that he barely knows what's going on most of the time. He can be prone to random mood swings because of this, as when he actually beings to understand what's going on he can unexpectedly start Feeling Things about things, and occasionally those feeling come from a place hidden by his amnesia.

hurrrghghghg okay i think that's everything

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Here's a shortlist of those who realized that I — a cis woman who'd identified as heterosexual for decades of life — was in fact actually bi, long before I realized it myself recently: my sister, all my friends, my boyfriend, and the TikTok algorithm.

On TikTok, the relationship between user and algorithm is uniquely (even sometimes uncannily) intimate. An app which seemingly contains as many multitudes of life experiences and niche communities as there are people in the world, we all start in the lowest common denominator of TikTok. Straight TikTok (as it's popularly dubbed) initially bombards your For You Page with the silly pet videos and viral teen dances that folks who don't use TikTok like to condescendingly reduce it to.

Quickly, though, TikTok begins reading your soul like some sort of divine digital oracle, prying open layers of your being never before known to your own conscious mind. The more you use it, the more tailored its content becomes to your deepest specificities, to the point where you get stuff that's so relatable that it can feel like a personal attack (in the best way) or (more dangerously) even a harmful trigger from lifelong traumas.

For example: I don't know what dark magic (read: privacy violations) immediately clued TikTok into the fact that I was half-Brazilian, but within days of first using it, Straight TikTok gave way to at first Portuguese-speaking then broader Latin TikTok. Feeling oddly seen (being white-passing and mostly American-raised, my Brazilian identity isn't often validated), I was liberal with the likes, knowing that engagement was the surefire way to go deeper down this identity-affirming corner of the social app.

TikTok made lots of assumptions from there, throwing me right down the boundless, beautiful, and oddest multiplicities of Alt TikTok, a counter to Straight TikTok's milquetoast mainstreamness.

Home to a wide spectrum of marginalized groups, I was giving out likes on my FYP like Oprah, smashing that heart button on every type of video: from TikTokers with disabilities, Black and Indigenous creators, political activists, body-stigma-busting fat women, and every glittering shade of the LGBTQ cornucopia. The faves were genuine, but also a way to support and help offset what I knew about the discriminatory biases in TikTok's algorithm.

My diverse range of likes started to get more specific by the minute, though. I wasn't just on general Black TikTok anymore, but Alt Cottagecore Middle-Class Black Girl TikTok (an actual label one creator gave her page's vibes). Then it was Queer Latina Roller Skating Girl TikTok, Women With Non-Hyperactive ADHD TikTok, and then a double whammy of Women Loving Women (WLW) TikTok alternating between beautiful lesbian couples and baby bisexuals.

Looking back at my history of likes, the transition from queer “ally” to “salivating simp” is almost imperceptible.

There was no one precise "aha" moment. I started getting "put a finger down" challenges that wouldn't reveal what you were putting a finger down for until the end. Then, 9-fingers deep (winkwink), I'd be congratulated for being 100% bisexual. Somewhere along the path of getting served multiple WLW Disney cosplays in a single day and even dom lesbian KinkTok roleplay — or whatever the fuck Bisexual Pirate TikTok is — deductive reasoning kind of spoke for itself.

But I will never forget the one video that was such a heat-seeking missile of a targeted attack that I was moved to finally text it to my group chat of WLW friends with a, "Wait, am I bi?" To which the overwhelming consensus was, "Magic 8 Ball says, 'Highly Likely.'"

Serendipitously posted during Pride Month, the video shows a girl shaking her head at the caption above her head, calling out confused and/or closeted queers who say shit like, "I think everyone is a LITTLE bisexual," to the tune of "Closer" by The Chainsmokers. When the lyrics land on the word "you," she points straight at the screen — at me — her finger and inquisitive look piercing my hopelessly bisexual soul like Cupid's goddamn arrow.

Oh no, the voice inside my head said, I have just been mercilessly perceived.

As someone who had, in fact, done feminist studies at a tiny liberal arts college with a gender gap of about 70 percent women, I'd of course dabbled. I've always been quick to bring up the Kinsey scale, to champion a true spectrum of sexuality, and to even declare (on multiple occasions) that I was, "straight, but would totally fuck that girl!"

Oh no, the voice inside my head returned, I've literally just been using extra words to say I was bi.

After consulting the expertise of my WLW friend group (whose mere existence, in retrospect, also should've clued me in on the flashing neon pink, purple, and blue flag of my raging bisexuality), I ran to my boyfriend to inform him of the "news."

"Yeah, baby, I know. We all know," he said kindly.

"How?!" I demanded.

Well for one, he pointed out, every time we came across a video of a hot girl while scrolling TikTok together, I'd without fail watch the whole way through, often more than once, regardless of content. (Apparently, straight girls do not tend to do this?) For another, I always breathlessly pointed out when we'd pass by a woman I found beautiful, often finding a way to send a compliment her way. ("I'm just a flirt!" I used to rationalize with a hand wave, "Obvs, I'm not actually sexually attracted to them!") Then, I guess, there were the TED Talk-like rants I'd subject him to about the thinly veiled queer relationship in Adventure Time between Princess Bubblegum and Marcelyne the Vampire Queen — which the cowards at Cartoon Network forced creators to keep as subtext!

And, well, when you lay it all out like that...

But my TikTok-fueled bisexual awakening might actually speak less to the omnipotence of the app's algorithm, and more to how heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

Sure, TikTok bombarded me with the thirst traps of my exact type of domineering masc lady queers, who reduced me to a puddle of drool I could no longer deny. But I also recalled a pivotal moment in college when I briefly questioned my heterosexuality, only to have a lesbian friend roll her eyes and chastise me for being one of those straight girls who leads Actual Queer Women on. I figured she must know better. So I never pursued any of my lady crushes in college, which meant I never experimented much sexually, which made me conclude that I couldn't call myself bisexual if I'd never had actual sex with a woman. I also didn't really enjoy lesbian porn much, though the fact that I'd often find myself fixating on the woman during heterosexual porn should've clued me into that probably coming more from how mainstream lesbian porn is designed for straight men.

The ubiquity of heterormativity, even when unwittingly perpetrated by members of the queer community, is such an effective self-sustaining cycle. Aside from being met with queer-gating (something I've since learned bi folks often experience), I had a hard time identifying my attraction to women as genuine attraction, simply because it felt different to how I was attracted to men.

Heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

So much of women's sexuality — of my sexuality — can feel defined by that carnivorous kind of validation you get from men. I met no societal resistance in fully embodying and exploring my desire for men, either (which, to be clear, was and is insatiable slut levels of wanting that peen.) But in retrospect, I wonder how many men I slept with not because I was truly attracted to them, but because I got off on how much they wanted me.

My attraction to women comes with a different texture of eroticism. With women (and bare with a baby bi, here), the attraction feels more shared, more mutual, more tender rather than possessive. It's no less raw or hot or all-consuming, don't get me wrong. But for me at least, it comes more from a place of equality rather than just power play. I love the way women seem to see right through me, to know me, without us really needing to say a word.

I am still, as it turns out, a sexual submissive through-and-through, regardless of what gender my would-be partner is. But, ignorantly and unknowingly, I'd been limiting my concept of who could embody dominant sexual personas to cis men. But when TikTok sent me down that glorious rabbit hole of masc women (who know exactly what they're doing, btw), I realized my attraction was not to men, but a certain type of masculinity. It didn't matter which body or genitalia that presentation came with.

There is something about TikTok that feels particularly suited to these journeys of sexual self-discovery and, in the case of women loving women, I don't think it's just the prescient algorithm. The short-form video format lends itself to lightning bolt-like jolts of soul-bearing nakedness, with the POV camera angles bucking conventions of the male gaze, which entrenches the language of film and TV in heterosexual male desire.

In fairness to me, I'm far from the only one who missed their inner gay for a long time — only to have her pop out like a queer jack-in-the-box throughout a near year-long quarantine that led many of us to join TikTok. There was the baby bi mom, and scores of others who no longer had to publicly perform their heterosexuality during lockdown — only to realize that, hey, maybe I'm not heterosexual at all?

Flooded with video after video affirming my suspicions, reflecting my exact experiences as they happened to others, the change in my sexual identity was so normalized on TikTok that I didn't even feel like I needed to formally "come out." I thought this safe home I'd found to foster my baby bisexuality online would extend into the real world.

But I was in for a rude awakening.

Testing out my bisexuality on other platforms, casually referring to it on Twitter, posting pictures of myself decked out in a rainbow skate outfit (which I bought before realizing I was queer), I received nothing but unquestioning support and validation. Eventually, I realized I should probably let some members of my family know before they learned through one of these posts, though.

Daunted by the idea of trying to tell my Latina Catholic mother and Swiss Army veteran father (who's had a crass running joke about me being a "lesbian" ever since I first declared myself a feminist at age 12), I chose the sibling closest to me. Seeing as how gender studies was one of her majors in college too, I thought it was a shoo-in. I sent an off-handed, joke-y but serious, "btw I'm bi now!" text, believing that's all that would be needed to receive the same nonchalant acceptance I found online.

It was not.

I didn't receive a response for two days. Hurt and panicked by what was potentially my first mild experience of homophobia, I called them out. They responded by insisting we need to have a phone call for such "serious" conversations. As I calmly tried to express my hurt on said call, I was told my text had been enough to make this sibling worry about my mental wellbeing. They said I should be more understanding of why it'd be hard for them to (and I'm paraphrasing) "think you were one way for twenty-eight years" before having to contend with me deciding I was now "something else."

But I wasn't "something else," I tried to explain, voice shaking. I hadn't knowingly been deceiving or hiding this part of me. I'd simply discovered a more appropriate label. But it was like we were speaking different languages. Other family members were more accepting, thankfully. There are many ways I'm exceptionally lucky, my IRL environment as supportive as Baby Bi TikTok. Namely, I'm in a loving relationship with a man who never once mistook any of it as a threat, instead giving me all the space in the world to understand this new facet of my sexuality.

I don't have it all figured out yet. But at least when someone asks if I listen to Girl in Red on social media, I know to answer with a resounding, "Yes," even though I've never listened to a single one of her songs. And for now, that's enough.

[aro-botic]

I didn't know who else to ask.. I had a particularly difficult childhood and I can't tell if I'm aro or afraid? I finished things with my girlfriend so I could figure this out and if love to know what being aro feels like from your experience

Hi there anon! 

First thing I want to say is that I’m sorry you had a difficult childhood. These kinds of things can have huge ripple effects out to the kind of person we become. It is absolutely, 100% okay to identify as aro due to trauma. It’s also totally okay to identify as aro at first, and then later find that identity changing. Neither of these things would make your identity any less valid, if you eventually do settle on identifying as being aro.

Also it’s interesting that you bring up being “afraid” as an alternative to being aro. For me, my aromaticism is almost characterized by being afraid. I’m terrified that someone would see me in a romantic way, and that it could change any friendship I had with them before. The very idea of romance scares me - it’s something I don’t understand and don’t want to participate in, but still am surrounded by and expected to want. I’m afraid of the world not being accessible to me as a single person, I’m afraid of losing my friends to their committed relationships. And of course, bc of the truly insidious nature of amatonormativity I’m weirdly terrified of not falling in love, even though the very thought of being in a relationship usually makes me feel trapped and anxious.

Of course that’s all some deeps-seated fears that are more of a result of being aro in a romance-centered culture than a true description of what it feels like to be aro. There are definitely differences in the way I prioritize my life compared to others. My views on relationships have always been a little bit different than others; when I was a kid I literally thought that ‘love’ was a social construct and that people just kind of ... tricked(?) themselves into feeling it so that they could emulate what happened in movies and TV. As I mentioned, romance doesn’t make sense to me. It seems very... frivolous and honestly like a big waste of time haha

As for more general things, the first thing I need to say is that I’m at the end of the aro spectrum in that I never experience any degree of romantic attraction. As strange as it sounds if you’re new to the concept of aromanticism as a lack of romantic attraction, experiencing romantic attraction doesn’t actually prohibit you from being aromantic. 

That being said, some of the things that I feel are heavily related to my aromanticism are:

not understanding why people value romantic partners over other forms of relationships

not understanding why people think sex and romantic relationships are inherently linked (e.g. needing to be dating a person to have sex with them, thinking the only way to loose your virginity is to someone you’re hopelessly in love with)

not getting crushes

getting very, very bored during drawn-out romantic plots in TV/movies

feeling smothered by being in/thinking of being in romantic relationships

people thinking you’re “cold” or “heartless” bc you’ve honestly just got better things to do with your mental energy then worry about what this person thinks about you in relation to dating/romance

never getting butterflies when you think of a person, even if you like them and/or get a long with them a lot

being sort of vaguely uncomfortable being friends with the opposite agab, bc you’ve always been told that leads to romance 

There’s some more things about myself and my experiences I could probably dig out that are the result of being aro, but those are some of the more easily described ones (also this post is v long already). One of the big things I find that characterizes my aromaticism is the fact that even if I do some day magically feel romantic attraction I’m just not interested in perusing it. I’d rather live my life for myself, get a good career, develop my skills and work on being a better person, than try to engage in any kind of romantic relationship. 

Also, there are a couple of posts and resources I’ve come across in my time on aro tumblr that might be of help to you:

“a positive guide for the questioning aro”

the official aromantic resource webpage: AUREA

A list of common aro experiences that people have had

this piece I wrote about what it feels like to be alloaro

A good thing to remember: there’s a wide range of ways people experience aromantcisim, some people do have fulfilling romantic relationships without having romantic attraction to their partners. Some people have QPRs, poly relationships, or engage in some form of relationship anarchy. If none of this resonated for you it doesn’t exclude the possibility of being aro if you feel like it’s a label that fits. Likewise, if all of it did but you still don’t feel like you connect with the label, then there’s no pressure to define yourself as such.

Hope that helps!! And good luck with your soul-searching, it’s a brain-bending task but for me it was well worth it in the end ^_^