Aegosexual culture is being "yeah, sex is gross... haha...." in public but actually being completely okay with it in private and making a lot of dirty jokes in your mind, and not knowing how to introduce the idea that you're not actually sex repulsed to your social groups (who've only known sex repulsed you)
oof that is
that is hard yeah
Forget ship dynamics. Give me your ex dynamics.
Cheated on each other, both found out, both went "Alright I'm out."
We both realized we were gay, now we're weird BFFs
"I refuse to give them the satisfaction of knowing how deeply they hurt me" x "They were closed off and refused to talk about their feelings at all, I have no idea what was wrong."
Enemies to Lovers pairing taken over by an author who isn't a creep
Writer wanted applause for gay rep but didn't have the willingness to commit so we're exes.
And my personal favourite
Green Card Marriage to Friends
Other people world building: "This is the history of the creation of the world and the birth of the gods!"
Me worldbuilding: "Here's the derogatory slang term Rangers use for the nobility."
I’m 15 and all my main characters are pretty much me, should I do something about that? I don’t wanna be a bad writer, but I’m not sure how to not add my own beliefs, quirks, and general traits into a character. What can I do to fix this?
You can't. Every character, from protagonist to villain, is going to carry a small piece of yourself. The protagonists are going to represent traits and values you consider heroic, the villains will influenced by what you consider to be villainous. The themes are what you consider important to talk about, the relationship models you use are the ones you consider healthy and interesting.
It's impossible to separate that from yourself from that. You cannot separate the artist from the art. It is impossible.
I can't separate myself from Aliana. She's an amalgamation of physical and personality traits that I associate with heroism. The same goes with the way I write Kylo Ren. He is given the physical and personality traits that I associate with villainy.
Every character has a little bit of you in it because they are influenced by the things you think and believe.
Do you have a questionaire for designing OCs? Or something to help design them? I've been looking around and a lot of them are overwhelming.
Most OC question sheets are actually good ways to procrastinate and tell yourself you're working on a character despite making no progress.
Here's four questions from Yahtzee Croshaw (a published author of several successful novels) that really get to the heart of how a character works, and to demonstrate we'll use Aliana as an example.
Think less in terms of concrete plot elements and more in a sense of what motivates them. Gaining power? Being loved? Etc? It could be that they already have what they want, in which case how do they hold onto it?
Aliana wants revenge for her mother's death, to rebuild her family, and preserve her Sith heritage. Simple enough.
A plot is a sequence of situation changes, what qualifies them to be an agent of those changes?
Aliana is a fully trained Force user, and understands how fascist power structures come to be in the first place and how to dismantle them. There we go.
People screw this part up because oftentimes a character's flaw is "gets angry." Some people might think Aliana's tech illiteracy is her flaw, but it isn't. A character's flaw is the thing they must overcome to reach their goal.
Aliana's flaw is that she's easily baited. Aliana enjoys twisting the knife in those who have wronged her, and this frequently results in losing opportunities to kill Kylo Ren. She is also easily goaded into circular arguments with people who don't intend to listen because she enjoys putting people in their place. Note this isn't a flaw because it's wrong to enjoy making your abuser suffer or dunking on an ignorant fool, but because it often makes it harder to achieve her goals by giving the villains time to escape.
What are the little irrational weirdnesses that make them human?
Aliana is bad with computers and mechanics (sans lightsabers) and is extremely into history and archaeology.
Never presume malice that which can be easily explained by ignorance.
But never presume ignorance when malice is clear and self-evident.
It's interesting how the quality of Pokemon's villains is in inverse proportion to the amount of dialogue they have.
Giovanni was a compelling villain because he was simple. He's a crime boss. He wants to treat Pokemon badly for financial gain. Simple, straightforward, and your conflict with him is primarily because he is directly in your way at different points of your journey.
Giovanni's Dialogue in Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow? 250 Words
Maxie and Archie started the trend of ham-fisted philosophy and are almost charmingly stupid in how they don't understand the danger they're about to unleash until it's too late and you get to feel smug about it.
Maxie and Archie's dialogue in their respective games? About 800 words.
Lusamine is about as "middle ground" as you can get, at least having a mostly personal story without any ham-fisted pretenses to idealism. She's just a controlling mother with empty nest syndrome, and that works. She'd be more interesting if the player was playing AS Lillie or Gladion, but whatever.
Lusamine's Dialogue in Sun/Moon? 1,300 words.
Lysandre is where shit gets obnoxious. He doesn't even know what he's trying to do. Nobody in Team Flare knows. Their motivations shift constantly almost trying to emulate Team Rocket and Team Magma simultaneously.
Lysandre's Dialogue in Pokemon X/Y? 1600 Words
Ghetsis is arguably one of the worst, because most of what he says ends up being a complete and total lie and he's just a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain because Game Freak was afraid players might actually start questioning the ethics of Pokemon battling.
Ghetsis' Dialogue in Pokemon Black/White? 1800 Words
Cyrus is the single most Black and White, evil for evil's sake villain in the entire series. He's the kind of character people imagine Giovanni to be because the mafia's pursuit of money and riches apparently isn't noble and obtuse enough to be considered a motivation. Cyrus waxes poetic about the world being terrible, but everything he says just flat out isn't true and not even in the misguided way like Maxie or Archie. He's just out of his mind being cruel for cruelty's sake.
Cyrus' Dialogue in Pokemon Platinum? 1900 Words
N is even worse because he waxes poetic about his ideals regarding ethics in Pokemon Battling, but it's an ideological dead end because the game never once challenges the player to consider what he's saying and contrives a reason for all his goals to fail, and his ideals are built off a faulty premise that Game Freak only entertains out of the illusion of a deeper story that ultimately reassures the player that they're already doing the right thing. Pulling the same con they did with Ghetsis but with even more dialogue and more interruptions and more wasting the player's time on a premise that you were never expected to take seriously. Game only wrote N's story because they were salty about PETA trolling for attention.
N's Dialogue in Pokemon Black and White? 2700 Words, oh my god somebody get a ballgag for this kid!
The lesson here kids is "Brevity is the soul of wit."
Reverse Coma Theory: That dark and gritty series you love? It's actually kids playing in the woods.
So when are you going to stop using "gay" and "lesbian"? They're slurs too by that standard
Gay originally meant "jovial" and Lesbian takes it's origin from an island.
As opposed to the Q slur which originally meant "perverse."
If you can't see the difference, you're too young to be on this site.
"they/them pussy" this "they/them pussy" that. you couldn't handle they/them dick but nobody wants to talk about that
It feels too good. And it's not just The Owl House. Between it and The Loud House have openly LGBT characters in its main cast, and Harley and Ivy now being a couple going into future seasons of Harley Quinn, we're finally starting to step out of the hole that LGBT rep has been in.
YES I KNOW! FINALLY!
All of our words are reclaimed slurs. Gay and lesbian were slurs. Even homosexual was used as a slur against us. The word queer has been used since the 70s to embody our entire community, and backlash against it has only started recently. You know who started that backlash? Terfs.
1) why are you submitting this to me and not the person I reblogged the posts from. She's much better at this then I am
2) Gay ment happy. The Q-Slur ment weird. Very different. And the Q-Slur is still used as a slur, (I would know) just like the f-slur.
3) TERFS didn't start the backlash: LGBTQ+ youth with standards did.
I'm submitting it to you cause I respect you, I don't care about the person who you reblogged it from. I love your work and I don't want to unfollow you! It's okay you don't want to be called queer. But taking the word away from us isn't fair. Gay, even though it originally meant happy, is still very much used as a slur today (I actually hear it used more than queer in my school). The original meaning of queer also wasn't always a bad thing, it could mean unusual or unique.
Oh! I'm not trying to take the word away from you! Sorry if it seemed that way! I know I can't change you, and trying is useless and exhausting on both ends. I just don't want to be generalized by the word or called it, and I see a lot of people try to force it onto others. Those are the people I'm referring to when I speak out against the word.
I won't use the Q-Word in my own work or everyday speech, but if you identity as it, that's your own identity. I can't and won't change it.
I hate when people try to say you can’t be asexual if you like shows, movies, books, music, etc that contain sexual content. Not only do those things have nothing to do with what makes you asexual (lack of sexual attraction, that’s literally all it is), it’s simply the culture we live in. Sex is mentioned everywhere. It’s unavoidable. Lots of the music I like talks about sex, but I listen to it for the other lyrics or because I like the beat or overall sound of the song. Sex scenes in shows/movies and in books are nearly unavoidable, especially in media geared towards teenagers. Just because you deal with one aspect of entertainment doesn’t mean you enjoy it. Sometimes you just have to accept it in order to access the aspects of entertainment that you do enjoy. Asexuals can watch, read, and listen to anything they want. It doesn’t change their sexuality.
you can also be ace and actively enjoy that content!!! I do not have (nor want) magic, but I love fantasy! I rode a horse once, hated it, still love the horse girl genre.
it’s almost like fiction isn’t indicative of anything other than what kind of stories you like.
Huge aego mood here! I actively enjoy absorbing sexual content because it has nothing to do with ME. I can enjoy it and move on and not have to be anxious about relationships, or anything bad happening.
But I’m like that with other stuff too. Like I never went to a college party but one of my friends was in a sorority and I often said I “lived vicariously through her” when she told me stories about her nights. Heck her boyfriend (now husband) tried to convince me to go a party once by specifically playing to the line above of living vicariously through her. But I’m good with the stories from them about those kinds of thing I’d never do and making up anything else in my head and daydreaming it away
Asexual awareness week is the third week of October, i started this blog on October 3, 3 years ago. I have no other reasons for this to be, but I think I’m speaking it into existence.
This means I’m going to try and have the aego journey post ready to go but... depression and apathy are still dragging me down. Fingers crossed! Thank you to everyone who has messaged me or sent in asks with their aego journey
I drew this very specific ace artist meme with Mothman because I wanted to feel some happiness specific to me.
This is such a great meme because it points out something our hyper-visual society often forgets:
And I know we talk a lot how porn is not a replacement for sex-ed and how sex in porn is unrealistic, but i don’t think many people really consciously process just how much porn is not sex.
Let me show you what I mean. What is this?
Did you say “a horse“? Well technically it’s an image of a horse, and while that makes me sound like an annoying pedant, it’s interesting how much we conflate images with the real thing, to a point where we both subconsciously understand that you can refer to an image of a thing as “the thing“. (This experience seems to be learned rather than universal - many societies that don’t rely on visual reproductions as much as western society have very different ideas on image vs. object).
And while that’s a pretty cool image of a horse, you can’t ride it, feed it sugar cubes, or experience the constant fear of it accidentally crushing your toes. Nobody believes owning a photo of a horse is in any way similar to owning an actual horse. But then we don’t have a billion dollar horse photo industry trying to convince us of that.
Sex is a physical act, while porn captures only one or two specific dimensions of that (video/audio) which it then tries to make interesting in a way that can sort of make you forget about the other stuff that’s not there. And while liking sex usually goes together with liking porn, it is absolutely possible to like porn without liking sex (or vice versa) because porn is not sex.
It’s also important to understand that porn is an industry and that it influences how our society - an by extension, we - see both porn and sex, even if we don’t directly engage with it. We know that porn addiction often makes people loose interest in actual sex, so in a way people having physical sex is not necessarily beneficial to the porn industry. Extreme kinks are also something that is visually interesting and therefore desirable in porn, while real life sex is already a pretty intense experience on its own (no shame for anybody who practices kinks, I’m just highlighting why something that looks good in porn might not necessarily feel good irl).
Anyway, I went off rambling a bit, but I did this little mental exercise to show you why you can be ace and still like porn, and why you can dislike porn and still be allo. Now go forth and do whatever feels good to you! (as long as it’s not hurting other people ;)
I think this concept, and the “porn is not sex” thing is why I, as someone who identities as an aegosexual individual, likes erotica. I get to read and picture what is going on the way I WANT to and not the way that the scene is going. If it doesn’t go the way I want it to I can simply daydream the rest of it the way I want the scene to go. Either with the characters from the story or put my own daydream characters/paras into that situations and let the scene go from there and enjoy that.
Also, of course, sex as concept vs sex where I’m involved is something I consider key to the aego identity, at least for me. Cause I love imagining sex when I want to, without me, but not unprompted when I don’t seek it out.
If you want to have an aegosexual-themed icon, but don’t like how the dimensions of the flag mean that the triangles get very visibly cut off, here’s a version of the flag compressed into a cube.
