#but a fuck ton of them are just... me being aromantic ? like a lot of them me not acting in ways he thought were indicitive of love

[mimic-of-hysy]

Oh? *eye twitch* Let me just talk to him a little bit, let me grab my utensils tho, you never know when you need them la la la 🗡🔨🪓🔪

yeah aha he hit right in an insecurity that he is very aware of. he blocked me on pretty much everything now though so i shouldnt have to hear from him ever again !

*gestures in a vauge direction* youre more than welcome to go have a chat with him though

[crocheting-cupio]

"Do I Have A Crush?" Quizzes as an Aromantic

In a previous post I had mentioned that I love taking "do I have a crush?" quizzes as an Aromantic. What I didn't share in that post was all of my findings from taking basically every quiz on that topic I could find. This is gonna be a bit of a long one, but I hope it will be an enlightening one!

Being an aro and taking these quizzes is pretty interesting. Because I do get plushes, which for me share some qualities with crushes, but are a completely different experience as a whole. For lack of a better equivalent, I have used my plushes while taking these quizzes. This will become relevant later on.

Anyway, here are my findings:

1. The target demographic for these quizzes is teenage girls. Well, the majority of online quizzes are intended for teenage girls. But these ones are especially designed for teenage girls. It's often painfully obvious by the way they are written, the answers available, and the scenarios provided. About crushes specifically though, this makes sense. Most people have their first crush during their teenage years. So the next logical step is to be curious about these new feelings and take an online quiz to figure out what's going on. Why only girls, though? Hard to say. It could be because they assume boys generally feel more confident in their romantic interest and thus would have no need for such a thing. Worth noting it was very hard to find a TRULY gender inclusive quiz. There's tons of wlm and wlw, but almost nothing for mlw or mlm. And if you're nonbinary or your crush is nonbinary, good fucking luck. The vast majority of them rely on some sort of gender stereotype. So many of these are clearly written from the perspective that you are a cishet woman interested in a cishet man. In multiple quizzes I have actually found typos where instead of using they/them, they accidentally use he/him in one question, almost like it had been up for a few years, then someone edited it later and missed one. A freudian slip if I ever saw one.

2. Practically all of them assume you are currently attending high school I understand that this is the time when most people get their first crush... but there are people who only crush on celebrities and fictional characters until they are an adult. This is not an extremely uncommon occurrence. So as you can imagine, there are a lot of questions that ask about how you interact with this person at school. Usually the addition of "or at work" feels like an afterthought. Some quizzes I've come across don't even consider that an adult might be taking the quiz. Like the question just openly states that you are at school.

3. They frequently assume that your crush is NOT someone in your friend group. This is probably the most interesting one to me personally. Because I myself cannot get a plush on someone until I've known them as a friend for at least three months. And I know plenty of non-aro people that need to get to know someone as a friend before developing romantic feelings. It's just... such an oddly specific assumption, y'know? They don't even consider that maybe this person is already in your friend group (unless you are talking specifically "do I have a crush on my best friend" quizzes). They just doesn't consider that the way you feel about someone can change over time. It's love at first sight or you will never feel that way about that person, I guess. (I think this is more teenager shenanigans. Because "am I about to enter a relationship with an abusive guy" doesn't appear to be the concern. Just that both or either friend group might not approve...?)

4. They generally assume your crush is a stranger or someone you do not know very well. Related to the previous one, this one is kind of weird to me. I understand the concept of love at first sight, but these are "do I have a crush" quizzes, not "is this love at first sight" quizzes. Almost every quiz I took had a least one question that assumed you had fallen in love with someone you have never spoken to. And often for answers on other questions instead of including an "I'm on the fence for how I feel about this person" option in the answers, which would be pretty logical to include, they have an option that says "N/A because I don't actually know them." However, the "do I have a crush on my best friend" quizzes are an exception to this. Instead they often assume you are spending every single free moment of time you have with this person.

5. If you have a crush on your best friend, you have either terribly misinterpreted you feelings and theirs, or they will never feel the same way about you. Um, yeah... I guess some people just can't tell the difference between romantic attraction and just being really good friends. But an important note: I think in some cases there's definitely outside pressure saying that two people "should" be in a romantic relationship simply because they are close platonically. Making those people question how they feel. Hence the existence of these quizzes. I can definitely feel that pressure while taking them.

6. They assume that your friends are all a certain type of person and your relationship with them is very specific. So here's the common assumptions I found across most quizzes:

Your friends are the type of people that are very invested in the love lives of everyone in that friend group. (And also outside of your friend group...)

Your friends are the type of people that will tease you about your romantic interests instead of being supportive.

You talk frequently about your love interests, love life, or lack there of with your friends. (Before you say "What? Everyone does that!" Not everyone does that.)

You are the only person questioning your feelings, everyone else is certain you have a crush.

Thankfully a teenage friend has informed me that this is 100% a teenager behaviour that happens all the time. Although I have seen cases where women under the age of 25 can also do this. I would go into detail about each of those but I think how these are not good assumptions to make is pretty self explanatory. You don't know me, you don't know what my friends are like, stop saying your experiences are universal. I will say blindly trusting the quiz taker's friends is not as reliable of a choice as it sounds. Sometimes people will just call any fond feelings for someone, platonic or not, a crush. And they sometimes will insist that person has a crush even if they say that they do not have a crush and simply want to be friends. And after awhile it can get to your head and feel like the only opinion that matters.

7. They assume this person is someone who you know/you regularly see in real life. In every quiz I took they asked at least one question that I could not answer because the plush I was using for all of these is someone I only know online. Specifically, it was some variant of "how often do you stare at them?" I understand this is a defining part of having a crush for most people, but I was rarely even given the option to say that this person and I are not regularly in the same room. Okay, let's say a teen girl gets a crush on a boy on from another school during like a sports game. She cannot answer this particular question truthfully either because imagining how often you'd stare at someone you met once if you were regularly in the same room with accuracy is not easy.

8. They assume you have the biggest crush, as anything less could lead to negative results from the quiz. Because I do not experience the same feelings, sometimes answering these questions truthfully is very difficult because my options are usually like this:

Q. If your crush asked you to hang out, how would you react?

OMG YES YES YES!!!

Well, we hang out all the time (as friends) so this is just a normal Tuesday for us.

I haven't even introduced myself to this person so they literally cannot ask me to hang out.

I'd make an excuse to not go.

And none of this is even close to how I feel about my plush. Or even about my friends. I cannot answer this question with 100% honesty. Legitimately, I've felt like I've gotten "you don't have a crush" results for the simple reason that I am not head over heals for my plush. Often it was either "every thought in my mind is of them" or "they're alright, I guess." But you can see how only the first option, with the most intense feelings, suggests that you have a crush. The other three options are either completely neutral feelings or suggest dislike. And since that's what people are taking this quiz to figure out, almost everyone is going to pick the first option. It might as well be just "would you hang out with your crush if they asked you, yes or no?"

So these quizzes are built on the assumption that you do, in fact, have a crush. You just want those feelings validated.

"Okay that's great Snowy, but what results did you get from these quizzes as an aromantic?"

Well, I didn't write down exact numbers since there were so many quizzes I took over about an eight month period. Some of them I took multiple times months apart and got different results. But I'd say about 60% said I had a crush, or was likely to have a crush. And 40% said I did not, or it wasn't likely to be a crush.

The funny part?

When I took some of those I didn't have a plush on anyone at the time. I was just using how I felt platonically about a close friend as the "crush." And while this did sway the results, it was not by much. Turning it more into a 50/50 chance.

No plush, no sexual attraction, they are JUST my friend. And yet, the results screen tells me I am deeply in love with them about half of the time.

When I said they assume you do have a crush, I really meant it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, I have actually made my own "do I have a crush" quiz that hopefully avoids doing everything I just talked about. No assumptions about the person you may have feelings for, no assumptions about your friends, no assumptions about you, who you are, or why you are taking it in the first place.

It's password locked since I'd like to get results strictly from people who find this post on Tumblr (for now). So type in this word when prompted:

conformity

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I spent a long time with all the research and writing so it means a lot to me. 💖

[aromantic-diaries]

a ton of aromantic heterosexual cis men, at least in uni, are awful. two of them were my friends. i trusted them, we bonded over them saying they were both straight aroallos and I was a bisexual oriented aroace and we got along so well. then one of them added me on accident (or maybe "on accident") to a group chat where they were like a group of like the european equivalent of frat guys and they were making fun of my identity and talking about my 'tight pussy' (cause I'm a virgin, I guess). i scrolled up and one of them was on grinder hooking up with pre-transition trans men because they're "easy" and apparently can be easily convinced to not use a condom. he didn't see any of them as men, just as tomboy-ish looking girls. he was also sending screenshots of some of the cis or cis-passing guys and calling them slurs.

I don't want these people in the queer community, i got them to join our gsa and they were talking shit about that too. i dont know what their goal with me was, clearly they were just mocking me and the queer community. maybe eventually they wanted to try to have sex with me or something, idk. but after that experience i genuinely do not trust cishet aroallo men.... its like saying that polish people should be allowed into spaces for "ethnic minorities" as theyre called here. like they might be a little oppressed. but also theyre all so racist and theyd make the space much worse for the more oppressed people who are strongly affected (like african immigrants) and can't just change their surnames to escape xenophobia.

Alright, before I even say anything I need to specify that I am not trying to invalidate your experience or go "not all men" on you, and I'm not defending these men.

What I do need to say is that any category of people will have shitty people without exception. These guys you talked about are shitty people without a doubt. But using polish people being racist as an example kind of falls flat because while that is true a lot of the time, it doesn't mean that their problems don't deserve to be fixed just cause a lot of these individuals are bad. I don't know the people you've talked about so I can't jump to any conclusions about them but listen. They weren't like that because they were cishet men who were aromantic, they were like that because they were shitty people, labels aside. And I'm sorry but queerness, or any minority status is not an indicator of morality. A lot of queer people fucking suck. A lot of them are terrible people. Someone can be a minority and still have their own -isms and -phobias against other minorities and that does not fucking mean they no longer deserve to live in a more progressive world or have any type of sympathy for their struggles. And yeah the polish people thing is uh... Yikes, I would have kept that to myself if I were you

[spacelazarwolf]

As an aroallo who’s been involved in the ace/aro discourse from a few years ago, I’ve read the manifesto and found the blog behind it, and… yeah that’s not a psy-op, that’s just aros replicating political lesbianism on accident because they’re frustrated with amatonormativity and conflating it with romantic attraction in general, but I also feel kinda… weird about seeing it sent anonymously to someone who isn’t aro and idk if you’ve ever openly said if/that you’re aro or not. Even though the original creators of the manifesto were being completely genuine about it, that wouldn’t stop someone who thinks aromantics are homophobic freaks who need to be pushed out of the queer community from using it to create rifts by sending it to alloromantic queer folks to subtly say “look, this is what those heartless monsters think of you!” And since they’re anonymous, I have absolutely zero idea what their intentions are and cannot examine them more closely. It seems so far the reactions have been to criticize it while maintaining the stance that aros as a whole are fine, which is great, but I still can’t shake my suspicions of the original anon. I dunno. Maybe I’m still too burned by the discourse.

(This is not me saying you’ve done anything wrong, I get that you get a lot of unhinged anons and cannot control what people send you. This is me side-eyeing the anon who sent that to you really hard).

if it makes you feel better, this was the original message i got:

have you ever read the aromantic manifesto? (link here: aromanticmanifesto + tumblr ending) I'm not in very many aro-centric or aro-informed spaces IRL and tumblr is a cesspit so I'm very curious to hear what other queer people think of it, as an aroqueer person (genuine) feel free to ignore this!

in case that kind of helps to contextualize it, it wasn't like. someone just dropping a link and leaving, it was someone asking what i thought. i just couldn't read the pdf that the blog had linked bc it was formatted in a way that was hard on my eyes. but also i get a ton of ppl "asking what i think" and then it's just bait so it is so fucking hard to tell which questions are ppl who are genuinely curious and who is just trying to set me up :)))))))

but yeah, i think it's a pretty common anxiety for all types of queer people to worry that any time one of us does something stupid that we're all going to get punished. i'm monitoring my notes in case anyone uses this as an opportunity to be a dipshit abt it.

[romansbookshelfofelves]

Hi hi! ur transfem roman is rotating in my brain like a potato in a microwave /pos , do u have any other roman headcannons? :0

AGH IM SO GLAD YOU LIKE HER!!! Transfem Roman makes me so happy I need to share my brain worms w the world <33

I hc her as half-sudanese <33

Loves collecting pretty perfume bottles even though heavy fragrances make her head hurt lol

Redesigns book covers that are based off the movie version of the book in her spare time. The hero we deserve

Loves old Arabic love poems but can't read fus-ha/فسحى very well, so she tends to misinterpret some words or meanings and reimagine them in her own way, scribbling out vague shapes or adding splotches of paint to get her interpretation out on paper, or using them as prompts for her writing

Has crooked teeth!! She tends to cover them up in the headspace, but when she's on her own in her room you can see them. I also like to give her hyperpigmentation around her eyes (usually covers it with makeup, but lately has been incorporating it in her eyeshadow designs)

Also lots of scars. She could cover those up too, but she wears them with pride

Shes both a hopeless romantic and aromantic <33

She was utterly obsessed with rise of the brave tangled dragons. Trust me on this

I think both Roman and Remus have a different relationship with the headspace than the others- I like to think of the imagination as its own separate sentient being that the twins have heavy influence over, but can't fully control

Practices henna designs on the others for fun, over time she does unique designs for each of them rather than just traditional henna (Virgil thinks the intricate spiderwebs rolling down their arms are cool as fuck)

Had a bit of a crisis w her hair- hated it short before her egg cracked (but tried to stow away those feelings), tried to grow it out after coming out but still feeling like it looked wrong, and eventually feeling more comfortable w herself and cutting her hair short again, feeling more like herself this time :3

Early drafts are both her favorite and least favorite part of the creation process. Since no one's going to see them, she can just let herself go, but when the words or colors don't quite convey what's inside her she gets frustrated

Has to always be moving in some way- pacing, fidgeting, legs rocking. Patton makes her a fidget bracelet and it helps her a ton

Romanticises cooking together and the general kitchen experience but is truly so so so bad at it. She's the "making breakfast for my beautiful wife <3" "who tf is burning down my kitchen"

I also rlly enjoy genderfluid Roman!! Wears different earrings depending on how she's feeling gender-wise that day <33

[mejomonster]

I started Koisenu Futari and I wish alloromantic people could see like the first 10 minutes alone. So much of our main characters discomfort at being assumed to be flirting, being pressured to pick up on signs and be putting out signs, social norms and expectations, how people sometimes actively conflict with your behavior if you simply live your life without thinking in romantic terms/acting flirtatious/assuming, is what all kinds of aromantic people deal with. And the show does a good immediate job of showing how disruptive to a person's daily life that can be - just being your normal self, and people getting mad at you for not reading something they never said out loud, or assuming things of you, assuming a future for you and being annoyed you're not fulfilling it, society acting like your current life and life path isn't normal, etc.

Personal reaction below cut o3o:

On a different note just my personal reaction now lol. I'm demiromantic and god the opening to this drama REALLY hammers home why I hate a majority of fluff romance shows. A lot of them are "love at first sight" and rely on SO many situations that also happen in the beginning of this drama, but in this drama the main character acts like me: she's just being her normal self and this stuff is all pushed upon her and she just rejects it and step out of the sudden assumptions people make kindly and tries to move on. In so many "fluff romance love at first sight" things the main person is bafflingly smitten or overwhelmed and I get it cause it's a trope we are taught to understand after seeing so many times, but I don't relate to it and I've never experienced it and I'm never going to lol. This main characters experience is way more representative of how id react if unfortunately I ran into such situations. It's fucking refreshing.

Also I deeply love how much she enjoys her life, is happy with her friend, wants to move out with her friend. I felt just like her as I transitioned that part of life, and it's nice to just see it. In my social circle it's normal for people to move in with friends, prioritize friends like family (not just lovers), so her moving is what I did and makes sense to me. But I'm also very aware of the assumption friends may move out when they get a partner, will prioritize that more, and that society is generally expecting that so even when you're not doing it there's outsiders insisting it's not reliable or it's an odd living arrangement (like her family was). I like that she enjoys the life she's built.

It hurts my heart, but I relate and understand, to when she meets the man at the supermarket who says he believes there's people who don't fall in love. It's that moment when you realize you may not be alone, what you feel may be normal and actually have WORDS and concepts to describe it and a community of people like you! And suddenly you feel more like wow yeah I exist, my feelings are genuine, I am not alone and weird I am one of many people many tons who have felt like this and do and will and it's just like. That's why aces belong in lgbtq spaces (among many reasons). There is no space for people who feel aromatic or asexual and on that spectrum, in the majority of mainstream straight spaces. In the sense it still takes a person living into her adult life to even HEAR that how she feels is something ANOTHER PERSON also feels. It can take people decades to find out how they experience attraction or don't has a label, has a community, has people who can relate to them. And before even that just... simply can be a thing. I didn't know I was demi when I was a teen I just assumed all people felt like me, was confused when a lot of people seemed Not To experience stuff the same, and settled on maybe I was just a bit odd. Then one day I found a word for it and realized goddamn people Do feel this besides me, I'm not the only one who can't relate. It was the same experience being bi, not knowing ppl could like multiple genders until I found the bi community, and feeling "wrong" for liking multiple when adults and schoolmates would say "just pick" for ages. Or being trans, thinking oh whatever it was just my particular thing to cry about my gender and pray to be different, cause no one said to me that my gender could be different than what people call me as. So I just felt broken and confused until I learned there were words for my feeling, for who I was, and that I wasn't broken I was just something I had no words for before. Just like... people should be able to access community and information and feel less alone and more understood and accepted for being themselves.

The main girl in this feeling alone and not great every time people pressure her about romance and bring up how she doesn't act like them, I feel it in my heart. And I hope for whoever needs to see it, they see her isolation and want her and people who go through what she does to feel less of it. To feel more understood, to understand themselves more and have an easier time knowing how they feel is okay and its the fucked up pressures not understanding them that's frustrating.

Anyway I'm not even done with ep 1 just. Wow I feel like a lot of ppl could benefit a little just from seeing that first part.

[fanbun]

https://www.tumblr.com/fanbun/752745189017354241/hate-going-into-the-aromantic-tag-and-seeing-tons

I’m assuming this post is about Alastor (or at least a very similar situation) and as another aromantic person, I just want to say this:

I can’t use this website to interact with the Hazbin Hotel fandom much at all with Alastor’s ship tags blocked, especially not the #alastor and #lucifer tags. I used to get a lot of joy out of being part of this fandom, particularly Alastor, because he’s one of two asexual/aromantic characters from (now) mainstream media I can think of off the top of my head. I’ve been posting here (and exclusively here, I refuse to use most other social media apps) since before the pilot dropped, and ever since the actual show came out, I can’t use it anymore. I have the blogs I already follow, but even then a lot of them have shifted toward shipping content. There aren’t many blogs that’re completely platonic-focused, and it sucks. Obviously there were some blocked posts before, but I could scroll past them without feeling much of a difference. Now, it feels like it’s the other way around.

This is my issue. Obviously. But I can’t fix it short of leaving the fandom I’ve been part of for so long and is so important to me, and it’s really upsetting. I’ve blocked over 150 different blogs off the top of #alastor from the “this post contains filtered media” boxes (which is 90% of what I could see before), and if I scroll more than a few pages down, there’s a clear line where I haven’t reached yet. What’s worse, I don’t think this touched #lucifer at all, it’s only a little bit better than #alastor was before I did this. Short of blocking 90% of the fandom (which would most likely include a SHIT TON of my own followers since I’m also fairly active in the fandom), I don’t know how I’m supposed to fix it.

I can’t block every single blog that posts about ships I don’t want to see, but it’s so fucking prevalent now that I have to dig to find anything else. Which is ESPECIALLY upsetting considering I specifically liked Alastor because he’s like me. I was excited to have A Character. To not feel so fucking isolated in fandom spaces 24/7. And now I leave the tags feeling more upset and isolated than I did before. It has genuinely brought made me cry multiple times, because it reminds me of how different I am and how much I can’t enjoy these things the same way other people do. Being aroace is already really fucking isolating for me, both in the world at large and in fandom spaces specifically. I thought I had One Guy, I had One Guy for so long and now I can’t even enjoy looking through his tag anymore. It really sucks.

I don’t know what the hell to do about this man. I’m allowed to be upset, and I’m not going to apologize for that.

Sure, you’re allowed to feel upset by always seeing content that feels isolating or ruins your enjoyment of something. But that just means you have to find smaller fandom circles that share your preferences. Maybe you could join a dedicated Discord server that only allows platonic depictions of Alastor with other characters. Smaller communities can actually enforce rules like that.

I see where you’re coming from because I often feel disillusioned and out of place in fandom myself. But your experience is also shaped by the community you’re in. Admittedly I don’t engage with the Hazbin fandom very much. As a rule of thumb though, fans on Tumblr often have different priorities than fans on Reddit or Twitter for example. And Tumblr is known to have a large shipping community. So if browsing the fandom tags on Tumblr is upsetting you, you do not have to look at them anymore. There are other outlets and sometimes I find it more fulfilling to find one person to enjoy things with. That way you don’t have to worry about seeing a bunch of stuff that irritates you.

What I take issue with is the assertion that nobody should be shipping Alastor simply because it’s not relatable to every aromantic person. It will be relatable to some, and for others it might just be self-indulgent and not something they want to see in canon.

On top of that, some queerplatonic partnerships have elements that resemble romantic partnerships but feel different to the people involved. So what looks like romantic ship art to one person might be queerplatonic to another and vice versa. And if one argues that Alastor could only ever be non-partnering because it’s important to his aroace identity then that isolates partnering aro/aces in the fandom.

The point is that a lot of people have their own preferences and sensitive feelings regarding how they relate to their favorite characters. Feeling those emotions is absolutely fine. But making posts that suggest that other fans have wronged you for participating in fandom their own way isn’t going to make the community better. The most it’s going to do is make people feel guilty and spread hate to those who have different headcanons. And the worst effect it could have is dividing the aroace community just because someone’s experience of being aro or ace is different.

It’s okay to be different. We can all find likeminded people and make peace with it.

[virtue-and-beneviolence]

hi hi!! it took me way too long to decide on someone for this event, but i did it!! congratulations to me. and it’s hakkai <3

okay so let’s just start at the beginning bc idk what else to do. so i’m aromantic, but cupioromantic, and idk why but hakkai... i’m pretty sure he’s the closest i’ll ever get to experiencing romantic attraction lol. like, i get all giddy and happy when i see posts about him on my dash, and sometimes i get a butterfly-esque feeling... tingly stomach. no clue why he does that, none of my other f/os or faves or whatever do that to me in this extent. i guess he’s just special <3

that said it took me an awfully long time to add him to my f/os because he’s been doing the weird teenage love feels to me for over two years and i only started self-shipping with him two weeks ago. which is also why i ended up choosing him for this, he deserves more love from me!!

apart from the teenage love feels he’s just so pretty, and sweet, and cute, and kind, and asdghjhfhjg you know. wonderful little guy i wanna hold and kiss him so bad. oh and i want to braid his hair while he’s playing video games or smth... just casual physical touches.. idk. i’m a simp for him i can’t help it

aaalso i very much headcanon him being into pottery!! i tried it out a bunch of times and i absolutely suck at working a potter’s wheel bUT i believe that hakkai is a lot better at that than me and i think we could go on cute little pottery dates where he tries to teach me how to use a potter’s wheel <3 and we could also decorate his pieces together bc i am good with clay, just not those damn wheels. and that would probably end up in us making a ton of those frog mugs with a lil frog at the bottom that you can only see if the cup is (mostly) empty... and then having to gift some to our friends because we don’t need that many mugs plus i love gifting my friends hand craftes stuff, and i bet hakkai does too.

i feel like he’d be soo embarassed about it first and get very flustered when we cuddle for the first time but i have real experience with this one for once so i would probs initiate it when i’m comfy with it (which would be pretty early on lol) and i don’t think he could say no to us cuddling. and i bet he’d immediately text mitsuya abt it as soon as he’s alone again, excitedly spamming him talking abt how nice it was. and he’d probably forget to mention that we just cuddled so mitsuya thinks that we fucked and then hakkai gets even more embarassed. he’s a dumbass but he’s my dumbass, and he’s adorable i love him. (also i totally never accidentally did the thing where i excitedly told someone abt my cuddling experience and forgot to mention that it was cuddling. nooo. this could never be inspired by myself /j)

more random headcanon stuff but i love going berry/fruit picking, and he’d totally agree to go do that with me no questions asked... so yeah us going berry/fruit picking as dates. maybe even mushroom picking if he likes mushrooms bc i don’t but i like picking them and know a bunch bc i used to go do that every year with my mom when i was younger.

i’m bad at describing myself but i hope you got somewhat of a grasp of me through this and the few interactions we’ve had adfjjshg. (also, suggestive stuff is good tho anything implying me bottoming is a no bc it gives me dysphoria. but otherwise yes to that 👁)

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◇─◇──◇── @appreciatingtokrev  x Hakkai! ──◇──◇─◇

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□ Where do I begin with you and your hunk of a man? He's so incredibly supportive of you and always willing to go above and beyond to encourage you in anything you want to do.

□ And yes. That has resulted in him throwing 40+ mugs so you could give them away to friends and family when your hyperfixation was all things clay related. And he did it with a smile.

□ You gave took turns massaging each others' hands a lot in those weeks. He has such pretty hands.

□ You're actually not allowed to touch his hair when he plays video games with the guys, Smiley has forbidden it. He gets too sleepy and makes them lose </3.

□ You're also not allowed to touch or kiss his neck when he plays bc it bricks him up so fast. And the guys all groan bc when he gets a very specific kind of whiny, and then disappears for the night they know exactly who to blame.

□ Mitsuya just chuckles and tells them to shut up and let the boy get lucky.

□ You may have tried to be generous a few times under circumstances that the guys could still hear and well,,,,to the is day Mikey will sometimes mock Hakkai's moans.

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Nothing to say here but forgive me hakkai for i have sinned against your with these hcs </3 lmao

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Come make my day, tell me about your self ship, and get some hcs of your own.

[crystalconfusions]

man im pretty sick of being the way i am. something in me is not functional, and maybe something has never functioned. ever since i went through some shit in high school i have had major trust issues and paranoia, its like theres a wall between me and other people. i know intellectually that everyone is not out to get me, but idk why i just cant form close friendships like i used to. and i cant share even basic info about myself a lot of the time even though i know its fine to do so. i always think people secretly hate me, and i overanalyze everything other people do even if its normal shit.

i want to fall in love and have a relationship, but idk if im capable of it. even before all this shit happened i never was that interested in romance or sex, maybe bc i was on lexapro lol but idk. maybe im asexual and/or aromantic but no offense i kinda dont want to be. i want to have romance, i want to have sex, ive just never met a person who i would do any of that with. or at least im not willing to be 'vulnerable' and even attempt to flirt with ppl let alone date or have sex with them. and im fucking 23 years old, its kinda pathetic.

i just dont want to be alone, but i feel like i cant trust other people. even though i try to make friends, i am still the outsider looking in, and people forget about me. usually i enjoy life, and i'm generally pretty upbeat, but idk my paranoia has been acting up recently and i cant get past the thought that everyone i know secretly hates me. its compounded by the fact that i live in japan, and im probably fucking up tons of language things and basic social interactions here just bc im a foreigner and dont know how to do normal shit. every interaction is just like a scripted play that i am acting a part in and repeatedly fucking it up.

i think i need therapy, but no one does that shit here lol.

[britneyshakespeare]

6, 8, and 10 for the ask game ❤️

Funny enough, these were three of my favorite questions in the prompt :^) good taste anon

What is your favourite part about being aromantic?

The best and worst things about being aro kind of go hand-in-hand in my experience. You're unique! But no one understands you. You defy expectations! But you never fit in with other people. You can be all alone! You're all alone. Etc. etc.

But yes, the uniqueness of it is what makes me feel comforted, especially when I put my feelings out there and other people actually understand them. Which is mostly just other aros, but still, other aromantic people are awesome. We learn so much from each other. I genuinely do feel closer to people when they tell me that they're aro and/or ace or even that they've questioned (or are questioning) that in themselves because it's like, phew. Someone who has a bit of experience in my shoes, even if we still ultimately come about it differently.

But as a creative writer, being aromantic fucking rocks. Fuck amatonormativity. Soooo much literature is amatonormativity. Especially poetry, and I know that intimately well as a goddamn poetess! I've gone on this rant before but being an aromantic poet is kind of inherently rebellious to me. I love writing about my aromanticism. Often I come to it since it's been a topic of confliction and confusion in me more than pride, but the pride comes in looking what I've done. And the creative product of an aromantic person reflecting on their experiences is always going to be subversive and interesting to me.

Do you associate anything with being ‘aromantic culture’?

I guess this kind of relates to the last question, in that, yeah, I think my poetry is pretty Aromantic Culture™ if that is a thing. Well I mean, it probably is a thing, but I'm not the moooost involved in aro or ace-spec circles online? I used to be more active in them, although never too immersed because back when I would go to blogs and pages and all that to feel affirmed, I didn't wanna be chased by the exclusionists since that was the height of Tumblr ace discourse.

And nowadays I'm just not as online as I used to be. Sometimes I see posts from other aros coming on my dash that reference an inter-community discourse that I'm just not aware of and not necessarily interested in forming a stance on? I could name examples but I kinda don't want to since I don't wanna offend anyone or invite those discussions I'm admittedly ignorant of to begin with.

I guess certain spaces on the internet are just aromantic culture to me. I don't overly personalize the things I like to be aro (unless I make them of course). Perhaps certain works of art that other people make, particularly other women when they're defying heteronormativity. For me my identity as a woman is inseparable from my aromantic experience but I also feel like... well, a shit ton of the aro people *I know* (I don't know the hard numbers on this, if there are even surveys) are nonbinary, so. My aro culture doesn't speak for everyone. Idk. This is a fascinating question and I feel like I could get lost in a million tangents about just what it means to be this or that thing. I guess aro culture to me bleeds everywhere but never shows itself solidly. We're all aro in an amatonormative culture, aren't we?

How long have you known you are aro?

Six years, as a matter of fact. Around the time I started my senior year of high school and I was overall in a very bad place, feeling how transitory my current life was but not being able to see anything in the future. It also felt like a lot had been behind me since, well, when you're 17, you're not grown up for sure but you really don't feel like a kid anymore either. I reflected on a lot of my "romantic" experiences and how I came out of them, and some things just didn't add up anymore like I thought they once did.

Sometimes I still have internal doubts because I'm like "am I really aro if—" (you know how it is) but I've always kind of known since I first accepted it that there's really nothing else I *could* be, in this lifetime anyway. But yeah, even as I have known for a relatively long time now (I just realized that's most of the time I've had this blog lol) I think my feelings about my aro identity have moved around a lot. Life experience certainly is something that happens and happens even more to you when you age beyond high school, and I am not perceived or treated in anything like I was back then.

I know I already answered that question with the first paragraph, but I just had to elaborate, because of course I would. :^)

send me aromantic asks

[crescentfool]

ryomina ship meme for stress-relief! (featuring some headcanons + elaboration under the cut!)

one of my favorite aspects to explore in ryoji and minato’s relationship is how they go about expressing themselves. the way i perceive it, ryoji and minato have contrasting methods going for showing their affection towards the other. in general, minato is very introverted; most of his affections are quiet and shown through his actions. meanwhile, ryoji’s affections take a very grand scale- he goes to huge lengths to show his love for minato!

i will always be fond of the headcanon that ryoji knows literally every damn language in existence. he knows love languages like no other, and considering his general enthusiasm towards life...? yeah, he’d definitely go and proclaim his love for minato every opportunity he gets. i can’t really give any concrete examples as to how ryoji does it (i’m not much of a writer), but i think he’s a very creative person in this way. his feelings for minato are very authentic and i think that’s adorable! 🥺

with minato specifically, i think it takes him a bit to warm up to ryoji due to the losses he’s been through before meeting him. so how does ryoji get through with befriending him? by giving minato all the clues that, “hey, i understand you on a very intimate level. i can’t fucking tell you why because i don’t know myself but i know from your body language that you’re a very kind person. i don’t want to see someone like you hurt” (god bless the p3 movies). and it’s... a nice feeling for minato; ryoji’s method of befriending him, makes him feel seen, and by extension, a lot more receptive to affection.

so when minato gets to the point of expressing affection towards ryoji! it’s a great development for their relationship; i personally love it when the roles of receiving and giving affection switch from the ‘norm’ ! of course, minato’s method of expression is very different from ryoji. while i do think being around ryoji can get minato to speak more than he would otherwise... minato’s form of affections lie in his actions and just spending quality time with ryoji. while he may not be able to make a verbal essay why he loves ryoji, he gets the point across by being with the person he values most!

in any case, when it comes to the definition of their relationship... i feel that it can vary on a case-by-case interpretation (or AU concept)! i feel with ryoji and minato they just naturally vibe together and they may not necessarily question why they click so well? they just appreciate being in each other’s presence; it isn’t really necessary for them to define their relationship by any labels. what matters the most to them would be the ability to share new experiences together, living each day as it comes. it might just be me projecting as someone on the aromantic spectrum- but their relationship sometimes gives me this “unspoken love/appreciation” type of vibe.

and that’s my ryomina thoughts for the day! it was a whole ton of fun to make this, i love thinking about ryoji and minato’s love language.

for those of you who may want the blank, this was created by @/simkjrs on twitter!

[adhd-hippie]

[ID: Post by fauxklore that reads “I miss being 7 and designing a Valentine’s Day shoebox and buying 25 little paper valentines with whatever I loved on them and writing them to each of my classmates and adding a little piece of candy to each valentine and dropping them in all my classmate’s boxes and then opening my own box at the end of the day to discover 25 little valentines from the rest of my class showing what they all loved...Oh to be a 7-year-old on February 14th.” End ID]

Okay so I screen grabbed this and posted separately because I DO NOT WANT fauxklore TO BE SHIT ON FOR THIS OPINION.  Their post is a little moment of nostalgia that I think we all relate to (at least those of us in the USA) and it has NOTHING to do with what I’m going to talk about.  It’s just an example and they deserve NOTHING BUT LOVE for this sweet little post.

So, I remember doing this and at the time I remember hating it.  I was always scared that people wouldn’t like my valentines, and because my family didn’t have a ton of money usually my valentines were handmade and the candy I included was always cheap.  Furthermore, I was teased and ostracized by a lot of my class (a common experience of ADHD kids) but I was still expected to give these abusers a gift.  I hated giving valentines to people I didn’t like and who had hurt me.  Furthermore while I did like getting valentines I wanted nothing but those from my actual friends.  When you get a valentine from someone who said you were ugly 3 days ago, well it cheapens the ones from the people who actually like you.

Anyway, I hated the pressure to participate in this tradition, but even more I hated the romantic connotations that were placed on valentine giving between the sexes even in elementary school.

People would tease you if they caught you sticking a valentine in the box of someone you liked as a friend if they were of the opposite gender.  Parents (not just mine classroom helpers and the like) would ask if you were giving any “special” valentines out.  Teachers would talk a fuck ton about love and being kind in the lead up to the day as if they were synonymous. 

I’m aromantic and I’ve always been aromantic.  I’ve always hated being teased about boyfriends (I’m a cis woman) about who I like, about dates etc. and that hate started in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL with VALENTINES DAY.  It is SO NORMALIZED in our society that everyone, understands and experiences love that literal children are expected to exchange romantically coded gifts in SCHOOL, which is just really fucked up!

So yeah, I understand the nostalgia for a simpler kind of love that was honestly more about personal preferences and kindness than romance, but why do we even do this.  Why is it normal to expect children to exchange gifts with their abusers and in secular public school when Valentine’s Day should really just be one of hundreds of Catholic Saints Days? 

Because our society values romantic relationships above all others and that is a fact!

[boredom-reigns]

this is just a messy ramble so feel free to ignore

note: anti hanahaki. ignore if you like the trope.

anyway so... mainly just... i cannot understand the hanahaki trope. it's just... completely off to me. i don't see how it's romantic in any shape or form. i know some ppl would take my opinions on romance with a grain of salt once they find im aromantic but still—in what world is it romantic where not reciprocating someone's feelings can cause their death?

you can't choose who you love. you can't control your emotions. guilt tripping someone to be romantically interested in some person they're genuinely not romantically interested is not in any way romantic for me. that relationship sounds like it would have a shit ton of baggage bc it has the vibes of "im forced to be romantically involved with you" which is... ew?

just think of how fucked up it all is? imagine you're mlm and a woman likes you and it's unrequited bc you're mlm. they die and like, ofc you're gonna be wracked with guilt even tho you had no choice bc you're simply just not attracted to women. how about aros? ppl who genuinely cannot be romantically attracted to others. it's not in any of their control if someone falls in love with them? it's ridiculous? it's fucked up how the burden of the emotions are on the one who literally doesn't do anything to cause it?

i hate it so much because it's so guilt trippy. i hate how it has similar vibes to those fucked up relationships where one threatens to commit suicide to get their lover to stay with them. it's just... ahsjdkflgl

im fine with hanahaki as a concept... if it was actually depicted as horrifying as it could possibly be. because it's just not romantic imo, to guilt trip the one you love to get romantically involved with you.

i understand a lot of people are having pain in being rejected. in their unrequited love. i get it, there's pain there and there's heartbreak and this trope is great for projecting that i guess. but making someone feel the burden of your life on them just because they can't make themself romantically love you back is..... just not it really in my opinion.

this also connects to society's weird hang up on "you're obligated to return their romantic feelings" like... we're not??? even if that person is the nicest nicest nicest person you ever met in your life, if you're not romantically interested, you're not.

no one is obligated to reciprocate romantic feelings

and i feel like there should be more media depicting that, really.

btw, extra note: im not demonising ppl who write hanahaki. i don't know them or why they write it and yknow, i can separate art from the artist. i don't like the trope if it's portrayed in a romantic light myself, but my opinion on the matter is just let people write what they wanna write. im not gonna police anything here. this is my personal opinion on the trope, not the writers. if you like hanahaki, good for you. and if anyone who wants to explain why they like hanahaki, go ahead im willing to listen.

[gay-otlc]

Keepers Of The Chaos (3)

Summary: Tam, Linh, Dex, Keefe, Biana, and Fitz are part of the tiny fandom for Keeper of the Chaos, and Tam and Linh’s podcast convinces some of their other friends to watch it as well. The group finds themselves strangely invested in this show, where students at Tumblr High School who work together to write about an elf named Sophia, cause incomprehensible chaos, and fight their rival Pinterest High School.

Content warnings: Cursing, religion (Jewish Vackers), and Amsterdam (just in case, I know that was stressful for some people).

Word count: 1621

Notes: Most of the episodes are just events stolen from Lynn's roundup, Dex's memes are here

(Read on AO3)

The life of an amateur meme maker on dumbles dot com was a strange one, that was for sure. After finishing xyr favorite show- Ze-Ra: Monaerchs of Powhir- for the third time, Dex had searched for another show to fill the void in xyr soul. Biana recommended this show called "Keepers of the Chaos" and described it to xem. Xe was doubtful at first, but after watching the first episode, xe was hooked.

Xe used to not have many friends at xyr school, so xe did what every neurodivergent queer teen would do- made an account on dumbles dot com. People seemed to like xem- or at least, they liked dizznee-plus's memes and edits of Ze-Ra characters. Even after Dex befriended xyr squish, Fitz, thons sister, Biana, and aer girlfriend, Sophie, xe continued making content on dumbles. Around that time, the Ze-Ra fandom started dying off, and xyr memes started getting fewer note

In a sudden, two am burst of inspiration, Dex made edits of some of xyr favorite characters, like Ref, Akki, and Rose, with their respective pride flags (all of them bi) over them, and captioned it "we must be gay." The post blew up, or at least, what could be considered blowing up in Keeper of the Chaos's tiny fandom, and that was how Dex found xyr calling as an amateur meme/edit maker for KOTC.

History had been repeating itself, with the KOTC fandom starting to die off, until it was revived by an announcement from creator Saturn Nolastname- a season two would be released soon. Frantically, Dex made a meme about season one episode two, with the car salesman meme. Xe edited "chaos keepers" onto the car salesman, "the rarelynoticed" on the car, and "this bad boy can fit so many stripper outfits into it."

That had been... an interesting episode, to say the least. The chaos keepers had been talking about the antagonists of "Sophie and the Dark Duck"- a rebel group called the Rarelynoticed. In the information packet they'd been given, it was confirmed that the Rarelynoticed wore black cloaks and armbands, but no other clothes had been mentioned. Somehow, the chaos keepers came to the conclusion that the Rarelynoticed really wore neon pink leotards and green stripper heels, then drew this idea.

Needless to say, the Tumblr staff did not let them write that into the book. Nor did Lynn, the unofficially chosen leader of the group. Unfortunately for her, this didn't stop the chaos keepers from drawing more of these- or the fandom from making a ton of memes. In addition to the car salesman meme, a post with Drake saying no to "wearing normal fucking villain outfits" and yes to "leotards and stripper heels" gained popularity within the small fandom.

Though nothing could match the absolute shock of seeing the Rarelynoticed stripper outfit for the first time, Dex decided to rewatch the episode anyway- it was funny to see the chaos keepers freak out, and maybe xe could get some good screen captures. The good Saturn Nolastname indulged xem, and xe captured an excellent scene of most of the chaos keepers either laughing or screaming at the Rarelynoticed stripper outfits, with Kimber- one of xyr favorites- sitting on the side, explaining to Juno and Kaitee why Bianca Cracker was bisexual.

Xe went over to dumbles, posted the picture, added an image description, and captioned it "Live photo of me not caring when my friends talk about sex/romance." Xe chuckled to xemself- this really was how it felt to be aroace. Xe tagged it as aromantic and asexual as well, since dumbles added flag colors. Smiling, xe went to go check xyr notifications.

Xyr jaw dropped when xe saw that @lordofthesnuggles- Fitzroy (Dex didn't know thons middle name) Vacker thonself had liked and reblogged all three of xyr memes, even adding compliments in the tags! Xe'd had a bit of a platonic crush on Fitz for... a really long time, but xe always felt too awkward to talk to thon, so it was nice to see that thon appreciated xyr humor.

Feeling energized- and excited to procrastinate on xyr math homework- Dex went to watch the next episode: Dark Duck Is Jewish Now. Being Jewish xemself, this was a really funny episode to xem.

Lynn had been writing a sort of spinoff- it would be called fanfiction, but it was for her own story- about some of the Dark Duck characters celebrating Christmas, and added a throwaway line about Bianca and Finn Cracker celebrating Hanukkah. Then, her fiance, Shai, had taken that idea and run with it, writing a list of ideas about what would happen if the Cracker family was Jewish. Hir friend Sam had jumped on the idea, and soon they had abandoned writing the actual Dark Duck in favor of writing a story about Jewish Dark Duck characters. Some of the other Jewish chaos keepers, like Ref and Cat, helped out.

To be honest, it kind of surprised Dex that no one had made a joke about the Jewish Crackers just being matzah, so xe supposed xe would have to be the first.

Xe posted that observation, quickly getting a like from Fitz- which made xem smile. After a few minutes, Dex posted another meme: Shai and Sam standing in front of a door with a sign that read "elves don't have religion," and them saying "This sign won't stop me, because I can't read!"

It was accurate.

While that episode was great for Jewish representation, and funny, the Banana Noir episode was just plain weird.

It focused less on the Dark Duck than most of the other episodes, and was more about the crazy interactions of the chaos keepers. The episode was named for Banana Noir, who was really Cat Noir, but in a banana suit. Banana Noir was the son of Mellie, who looked like a shark, and Nora, who had platonically married faer. The mothers tried to arrange a marriage between him and Akki, who loved the side characters of the Dark Duck series. However, Akki wanted to marry Amelia. After a lot of shit that basically no one understood, Banana Noir's attempts were thwarted, and Lynn officiated the wedding between Akki and Amelia.

Yeah, Dex had no idea what the fuck was going on either. Xe'd watched an episode of Twins of the Chaos and a youtube video by arsonpog analyzing the Banana Noir chronicles, as it had been dubbed by the chaos keepers, and both expert opinions seemed to agree that Saturn Nolastname and the rest of the writers had probably been on crack when they made that episode.

The next episode made slightly more sense, though it was a low bar. After taking a break from the "official" Dark Duck story, the chaos keepers began collectively writing a Cinderella story about the characters Sophia and Bianca. People weren't allowed to be queer in the official story, but the chaos keepers still wanted to have fun with their obviously gay characters.

Even to the viewers of the show, who only received secondhand information about the Dark Duck characters, knew there was no way any of them, let alone all of them, were allocishet. The exact identities weren't entirely clear- when Dex had made edits of the characters' official art and xyr headcanons for their pride flags, a few people had disagreed- but both the chaos keepers and the fandom knew that despite what Shannon said, Sophia and Bianca were in love, and their Cinderella story should have made it in to the official Dark Duck story.

While excerpts of the Cinderella story were quoted in the show, most of it was left unclear, so Biana had taken it upon aerself to write aer own version of it. Dex was expecting an update later  that day, actually, or maybe the next. Ae wasn't always 100% reliable with aer update schedule. Still, Dex looked forward to when it eventually did come.

After the brief calmness from the Sophianca Cinderella episode, season one episode six, Amsterdam, exploded back into chaos. A few of the chaos keepers decided to discuss a fake scene in the book in which crazy shit went down, with the scene supposedly being located in Amsterdam. It had never been written and was never going to be, but everyone discussed it like it was real. Some of the highlights involved all the Dark Duck girls having swords (and the chaos keepers being gay for them), and a speedboat chase scene through the canals. Fitz had a popular theory that the chaos keepers would actually travel to Amsterdam in order to commemorate this crazy part of their lives. Almost as popular as that was a meme Dex made, with a man labeled "chaos keepers discussing amsterdam" and gesturing feverishly to a wall covered in papers and red string.

Of course, episode seven (Dark Duck Disney) was chaotic too. Everything was chaotic with this group, it was in the title. Shannon announced that the winning Dark Duck story would be adapted into a Disney movie. After past experience with terrible book to movie adaptations, the chaos keepers panicked. They panicked so much that it became major news within their school, which until then, had been largely ignoring the chaos keepers. Once the discussion about the movie settled down, they talked a lot about how in awe they were that their Dark Duck shenanigans were trending within the school.

But of course, none of that compared to the last episode of the season...

Dex changed xyr profile picture to include an ominous pair of teal eyes and sighed.

[ageofempires4]

absolutely crazy and wild that i've been in a relationship this long. usually i just break up with people as soon as they do anything that annoys me.

when i was seventeen i broke up with my thirty something year old boyfriend a few days before my eighteenth birthday just because one day it was raining and i saw all the worms that had crawled out of the waterlogged ground just to die on the concrete and i realized i felt more strongly about them than i ever had about him... since he had already bought me a birthday present i kept it. but even doing that made me feel cheap. i should have extorted him more for that illegal relationship but all i got was a shitty ring i threw down the gutter and bruises all over my face because i thought that making him give me more would make me feel like even more of a fucking whore than i already was.

and when i was in college i did a ton of ecstasy with a guy who told me he loved me and wanted to spend his life with me after graduating and then i dumped him because when i told him a professor had been molesting me for months he just said "but aren't you into that sort of thing?" as a joke and all the mild tolerance i'd had for him evaporated up and turned into hate.

and when i was in high school a guy got up on stage and sung a love song for me and it was so humiliating being singled out that i dumped him the next day.

and when i was on my way to college i broke up with one of the only guys who ever treated me decently because i thought i had to sever all my ties to high school life in order to have fun in college. big mistake!

i also broke up with a guy who got drunk and cheated on me with some chick i kind of knew but not close enough to care about and then he tried to break into my house and kill me for it.

but now i'm dating a normal guy who annoys me all the time and yet i don't break up with him because... i dunno! i like him!! i love him, even! i can forgive him for all the things that are annoying. i can be honest with him and talk to him like a real person instead of pretending to be a girlfriend. i spent a lot of years pretending i didn't have interests or desires because pretty much nobody i dated ever cared about them. just the typical "oh that's nice. want to have sex?" type of shit. a few people did care about what i had to think and say and those are the ones i regret breaking up with. because he cares about what i think about i'd definitely regret breaking up with him, so i'll never do it. besides, we have fun together and are compatible and... god... what else do people who are in love do anyway?

because i'm beautiful and funny and great to spend time with only one person has ever broken up with me in my entire life and that was because i was like fourteen years old and insane and definitely not a fully developed human being with the fun sexy and desirable personality traits i have now. it'll never happen again.

im like borderline aromantic tbh. but people keep falling in love with me, and i say, "why not give it a try? maybe this time it will be different..." and i think this time it really is different because i've decided to make a commitment.

[robotslenderman]

Someone on Reddit was asking why labels were important and I went into a whole goddamn essay because my Vyvanse is kicking in.

TLDR - Labels are important for communication. Without communication, we are isolated. Sexuality is so fundamental to our experiences as human beings that being able to describe those experiences succinctly can mean the difference between feeling isolated and feeling connected. Also sneering at ace people for microlabels dismisses the asexual experience as so unimportant that we SHOULDN'T be able to describe our exact experience of it, when discussing asexuality often requires these labels because of how varied and complicated the asexual experience is.

I've been waffling on the fence about microlabels but I've decided that no, microlabels aren't overthinking it, for the reasons I discuss below. In the past I've reblogged things saying that microlabels are about isolation instead of connection, that further dividing our sexuality into smaller and smaller boxes creates increasingly exclusive clubs.

I no longer believe that. I believe it does the opposite. I believe that being in touch with your sexuality just as much as you need to helps you connect to others even outside your microlabel, not just within it, because then it makes it clearer to everyone involved what experiences you have in common and makes it easier to set aside the ones you don't.

You don't understand how important labels are until you've struggled without one. It's human nature to use language to describe our experiences, and when we don't have the language to do so it is stressful and isolating. Because language is how we connect to other people, so when we can't use easy language to summarise our experiences, it becomes isolating.

My personal experience - I struggled with my asexuality for years, even before I began to realise that I was asexual. Even once I started letting myself admit it, I didn't feel that the word "asexual" was enough. Sure, I could explain to people "I'm asexual and don't want to have sex, but I love sex in theory and in novels and I love reading about romance and daydreaming about them, but don't want a relationship." That's a very specific type of asexuality that people don't think of when they hear "asexual". People hear "asexual" and think "doesn't like sex."

But people use labels because others don't want to stick around and listen to your dissertation on what your sexuality actually is, they want bite sized information as soon as possible and sometimes YOU want to describe who you are without spending a ton of time explaining it. It's not just because I want to understand myself, it's because I want other people to, too, and labels is how we communicate. It's the fundamentals of how language works. Labels are so important that they consist of two entire grammatical categories - adjectives and nouns.

So when I found out about aegosexuality? I was like "oh thank god, I'm not a broken asexual, I'm this specific TYPE of asexual."

Most people haven't heard of aegosexuality. I used to actually roll my eyes at microlabels like that, thinking it was needlessly self absorbed and pretentious. But now I get it. Now I have the ABILITY to summarise my experiences in one word, and it turns out that having that ability to use language efficiently to describe myself has brought me quite a significant amount of peace. Because when I tell people I'm asexual, they often have a certain idea in their heads of what asexuality is, and I don't fit under most of that. Many asexuals don't, because asexuality is the most complicated sexuality there is.

But god is it fucking exhausting to say "I'm asexual" and then have to hold a fucking Q and A session about how I'm asexual and yes, I really am asexual even though I'm not adhering to someone else's idea of what asexuality is. By knowing I'm aegosexual, I can say, "oh, you're thinking of X type of asexuality, which is when you experience Y. I'm aegosexual, which means that I still get horny and love sex in fiction, but I don't personally want to experience it, unlike X type of sexuality which doesn't like sex at ALL."

And then people get it! They don't get "I'm asexual, but different." That just makes them think I'm not actually asexual, or that I'm an allo in denial who needs therapy to be "fixed". They get "I'm asexual, but this specific type of asexuality that has a name." People respond to names. People respond to labels. They GET labels, even ones they haven't heard of, even ones they roll their eyes at because they think we're over thinking it because they assume that because their sexuality is so fucking simple, everyone else's must be too.

I still tell people I'm asexual because a lot of the time my type of asexuality isn't actually important. Actually, most of the time I tell them I'm queer and leave it vague because queer is a wonderful umbrella word and my sexuality isn't anyone's business. For me, "queer" is often enough because it communicates that my experience isn't a straight one, and that's usually all people need to know.

But having that label just on *hand* that describes my experiences, and having the option to use it to people who do know what it means, and being able to hand it to people who are lost like I used to be lost -

That's powerful. It's important. It *matters*.

It's not like needing a label for yourself because you prefer pineapple on pizza, this is sexuality, this is the kind of thing that makes or breaks your experiences with other human beings. When you're straight your sexuality is so simple and easy that you don't even need to think about it. You're straight. That's easy. And as homosexuality becomes more accepted I'm seeing baby gays start to take that attitude as well because they're gay and as homosexuality becomes less stigmatised, it's allowed to become more simple.

But other sexualities don't have that luxury.

Bisexuality and pansexuality are more complicated because often people experience a split attraction model, or they don't have equal attraction to different genders and they're not fully comfortable describing themselves as bi or pan because again, people hear "bisexual" or "pansexual" and assume that you experience the same amount of attraction to different genders and it's important to be able to communicate to people that no, you don't. The whole point of using a word is so that the other people understand you - if they don't understand the word, they don't understand YOU. So I think bisexuality and pansexuality is also a spectrum in that there's different types of both depending on how your attraction works, and that it would help bi and pan people to have more specific words - using bisexual and pansexual as an umbrella term much like queer and asexual - to allow them to better communicate their experiences.

And asexuality is, I think, the most complicated sexuality of all. It's based not just on who you're attracted to, like other sexualities, but if you're attracted at ALL. No other sexuality has a footnote attached of "but this one likes sex" or "this one doesn't like sex" or "this one is indifferent to sex". Even bisexuality and pansexuality don't. It also has the contradictory feature of involving some level of attraction - demisexuals and grey aces experience attraction! Just only under specific circumstances. The split attraction model is also much more significant; whereas some bisexual people are explicitly homo- or heteroromantic, many asexuals are not aromantic, and many aromantic people are not asexual. This is far more common with us.

It's also the ONLY sexuality where the split attraction communities are actively hostile to each other. Aromantic people have lately been slinging a lot of shit at asexual people because in their need to be told apart from us (I say "us" even though I'm aromantic myself because I'm also asexual), some have gone to the extreme of showing outright hostility to asexual people and show offence for being associated with us at all. When I thought that I was bi, for example, I NEVER saw this kind of shit between homoromantic bis, heteroromantic bis and biromantic bis. Only the asexual and aromantic community has this hostility.

I respect that aros don't want people to mistake them for asexual people and that's important for the same reasons I've been discussing in this entire essay, but here I'm referring to outright hostility aimed AT asexuals because of other people's failures to understand them. "Aromanticism isn't the same as asexuality" is not hostility. Treating asexual people like garbage - or even aroace people because they dare to exist as asexual AND aromantic - is hostility. This hostility is rising.

So asexuality is deeply complicated, and when you have completed concepts, you need simple labels to communicate that. And frankly - allos don't fucking get it. Bi and pan people do to a certain level, but their sexuality, while more complicated than being gay or straight, is still not as complicated as asexuality. That's not a bad thing, having a more complicated sexuality doesn't make us superior, nor is complication the same thing as depth. Other sexualities are not shallow for lacking the same level of complication, nor should they be taken less seriously.

But it does mean each sexuality has nuance to it that you can't understand without being that sexuality, and it's vital not to fall into the same trap straight people do that your experience of sexuality applies to everyone else, of assuming that because your sexuality isn't complicated to you that it must be the same for everyone else or we're overthinking it. And it's important for us to be able to succinctly sum up our sexuality so that we can share our experiences.

People who've never faced that don't understand how important it is to feel connected to people by being able to efficiently describe yourself. To use language is to connect, to use language and labels is to communicate. Without that, it's an isolating experience, simply because people do not fucking want to hear you bring out a PowerPoint presentation to talk about yourself when they just want one word. And when you're talking about something that defines your human experience, that makes your ability to communicate it THE difference between being isolated and disconnected, and feeling human.

Having different levels of labels helps, too. Sure, I'm aegosexual, but even if most people knew what that meant, most of the time it's completely fucking irrelevant. Most of the time all I need to do is say I'm queer - because I'm communicating that my experience isn't a straight one (or a cis one, if you're queer because of your gender). Sometimes I need to say I'm aroace, or just asexual, because that's what the conversation calls for. It's only when discussing asexuality itself that I actually need to say I'm aegosexual - but that's important, too.

Discussion of asexuality is no less important than being able to say I'm ace, or that I'm queer, and a lot of allos think that distinguishing yourself from straight people is important, that distinguishing yourself from non straight people is important, but asexuality itself is so unimportant that we're not allowed to distinguish ourselves among each other. And that's just another form of aphobia. It doesn't mean that we're going "ew, we're not THOSE asexuals" like I've been seeing in the arosexual community lately, it's being able to say "this is my experience of asexuality, so I'm viewing our discussion through THIS lens, whereas you might not."

And it's so fucking typical that allos think that that shouldn't be important to us. I regret ever thinking the same.

At the end of the day, we need language. It describes our experiences, and without being able to describe those experiences, we are isolated. We need language and labels to connect.