friendly reminder that asexual and aromantic are not the same thing so don’t use those terms interchangeably

Bulk posting my ace memes for International Asexual Day!

This meme was made to spread awareness for r/orientedaroace. Oriented aroace is an aspec identity where an aroace person feels that another label such as gay, lesbian, or bi is a significant enough part of their identity to have a place beside their aroace label, usually because they experience some kind of tertiary attraction. If this intriuges you, check out the pinned post on the subreddit for more information.

[ID: Well yes but actually no meme format. Top text says “Them: What’s your type? Which way do you swing?” An image of a bearded man is labeled “Pan-oriented aroaces” and captioned “ Well yes, but actually no.” End ID]

Also, today is my parents’ anniversary!  They’ve been married for thirty-eight years, and together for forty.

I don’t want to preach, but if you are ever afraid because you are asexual.  If you have a relationship that isn’t based on romantic love.  Mom is asexual.  She also said no to my dad’s proposals three times because she wasn’t in love with him, and she was and still is repulsed by sex.

When Dad asked the fourth time, my mom broke down in tears.  Because she didn’t want to break his heart, because she still cared about him so damn much even if what she felt wasn’t romantic love.  Because the only reason she would have sex with him or anyone was because she wanted to have her own children.  And you know what?

Dad still wanted to be with her, from the time he was eighteen until they both were ready for the grave.  Because he didn’t want to ever be without his best friend in the whole damn world.  Mom meant that much to him.

I can count on one hand how many times my parents have ever kissed in front of me, and every time was on the cheek.  But their hugs are the most heartfelt you’ll ever see.  When they laugh together, you know there’s a deep love between them.  They truly are each other’s best friends.

So congrats, Mom and Dad!  For always being there for each other, for me and my brother, and for my husband and our friends.  You are both amazing, wonderful people, and I am so glad that you found one another.

Ace parents exist?! And are happy?! I feel so much better!! I never hear about happy settled grownup ace people!

Ace people can start a family and have children! Here it is from one child! Keep your head up, you aren’t doomed. You are perfect the way you are and you can start a family, if you want, there is someone out there.

@lunarhobbits In the words of Lin Manuel Miranda: “Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside.”

Aroace with dragon themes for anon! Thank you for the request, I hope you like it :D

I made an AO3 collection for Aspec-friendly Good Omens works! Detailed info on the profile page but essentially, if your work can be read as featuring Aspec characters or relationships, even if they’re not specifically labeled as such, I want to add it.

(just for clarity’s sake, this includes all identities under the ace and aro umbrellas, including grey and demi)

icon is the aspec flag created by @the-moon-is-aroace

How To Know You're Aromantic

Trying to figure out if your aromantic can be hard, and recently one of my friends had a thought that they could be aromantic so this post is for them. We will first try to define romantic attraction.

What Is Romantic Attraction? To put it simply, when you are romantically attracted to someone, you want to do romantic things with them. Now this definition doesn't really give us much information. To use a better definition, romantic attraction is when you desire to be emotionally close to someone. This desire to be emotionally close shouldn't be confused with the desire to be emotionally close with friends. To distinguish the two, desire to be emotionally close with friends is when you want to share secrets with someone and cuddle and be able to tell anything. The desire to be romantically emotionally close with someone is the desire for them to be there no matter what and like the previous relationship, want to do romantic coded things with them. Also, romantically emotionally close is when you want to be closer than friends are. Not everything is coded with romance. Wanting to hold hands could be sensual (wanting to just touch someone 'cause you can) or it could be romantic (wanting to be emotionally close with them).

How To Know You're Aromantic ° You are fine with not having a relationship at all except for friends

° You don't understand when people (not media) talks about falling in love

° You often think that love just isn't for you

° People call you cold hearted when you reject them because you do it with no regard to their romantic feelings

° You don't see the point of romantic relationships

° You see a long term partner as more of a friend

° You think that you might have commitment issues

Things That Don't Make You Not Aromantic • Wanting to touch someone (hold hands, cuddle, etc). That can come under sensual attraction

• Feeling butterflies in your stomach around someone. Butterflies happen when your nervous and you can get nervous for events or around people your sexually attracted to

• Not minding being in a romantic relationship. For some aromantics, we are fine with doing romantic things as often it involves no emotions for us

• Liking romantic media. You can read and watch romantic books and shows and that doesn't make you any less aromantic

• Liking the idea of romance. To quote Cavetown "often I am upset that I can not fall in love" and this is definitely true for aromantics who like the idea of romance.

Disclaimer!!! You could be aromantic and not experience any of this or on the flip side you could be alloromantic (not aromantic) and experiences all of this. Some people are late bloomers and if you are a teenager you should keep this in mind. I'm not saying to can't identify as aromantic as a teenager, just that you should keep in mind that some people are late bloomers.

Cavetown song I quoted:

Here’s a comic I made about identifying as asexual and aromantic! I made it for an anthology which ended up falling through, so I thought it would be a good idea to post it on Valentine’s Day.

Take care of yourselves out there! http://raizap.com/

So…

…I was thinking about the fact that somebody said they weren’t behind lesbian Carol Danvers because they saw the relationship between her and Maria as queerplatonic.

Both are actually pretty well supported by the text, esp. if you bear in mind that the movie was set in the 1990s and they were both mil types, so…late 90s and 00s kids, you don’t understand how much tighter the closet door was back then. If they were a couple and it came out, Mar-Vell might not have been able to save them from a dishonorable discharge.

Then my thoughts went to a different relationship in the movie.

The relationship between Danvers and Fury.

This was the obvious place to put the Obligatory Heterosexual Romance, and they didn’t. A decision I honestly applaud. The last thing this movie needed was an Obligatory Heterosexual Romance.

Some of the criticisms of the movie are that it “emasculated” Fury. Mostly because he does the dishes.

But it got me thinking about the character of Nicholas J. Fury as presented in the MCU. (We’re ignoring the comics here).

Up until this movie, we’ve seen Fury mostly as the ruthless, competent spymaster. He treats everyone as assets. He values people by what they bring to the table. He doesn’t care who you are or what planet you are from as long as you can do your job.

This movie was Fury’s origin as well as Captain Marvel’s. They explicitly show Carol as why he feels that way.

Except that there’s no indication he actually felt differently. All he needed was to expand his horizons. Perhaps part of it was being a black man in intelligence.

But at no time in the history of the MCU have we seen Fury look at a woman in a sexual manner. The dish washing scene was the intimate moment where the kiss would have happened in the Obligatory Heterosexual Romance. Instead, it was rendered explicitly platonic.

And hello, headcanon:

Fury isn’t straight.

It is absolutely supported by the text and never contradicted: Nicholas Joseph Fury is not attracted to women.

So I mentally ran another analysis based off of the hypothesis that Nicholas Joseph Fury is, thus, gay.

And that didn’t fit either. The MCU has never been afraid to queer code (and I suspect if it wasn’t for Chinese money and censors we’d see more overt queerness). Furthermore, I don’t see Samuel L. Jackson as being at all uncomfortable with a bit of homosexual tension.

Now, it makes a good amount of sense to set the “ruthless spymaster” archetype aside from romantic entanglements.

But combined with the fact that he doesn’t look at Carol’s breasts once, this has led the text to inadvertently support a different analysis:

Tl;dr: The MCU has had an aroace character from day one. It’s Nick Fury.

And you can pry this headcanon from my dying hands, as I’m pretty sure we are never going to see him romantically involved with anyone…

OP this is a good post