Ace Spec - Tumblr Posts
i saw this at newbery (newberry? newbary?) comics but i cant afford it :(
side note does anybody know how old you have to be to work at newbery comics bc that would be a cool job
I did a very quick, sketchy comic because I was extremely inspired by this post. (Credit to @pinkdiamondprince for the original post.)
The entire analogy was just fantastic and so, so accurate, and I wanted to make a comic for it, even if it’s very sketchy because my attention span is nil.
I love my Flag so much !!!!!
I just want to take a moment to appreciate the beauty that is the acespec flag
It so aesthetically pleasing!!! The color palette is just gorgeous, and I’m weak for pinks and purples.
Also the arospec flag?!!
The greens and greenish-blues are just so calming and peaceful. It makes my heart so happy!
Edit: Apparently there’s an aroace spec flag?! And it’s gorgeous too, of course ♡
I literally can’t even-
Thanks to you!!!! Yes I felt way more secure in tumblr (as the unhinged menace that I am here) as home is let's say.....not that great.....
🥹 <- you made me do this face while reading!
Your sleepy Boys are so so so cute!!!!!!!!❤️
MUCHÍSIMAS GRACIAS POR SER UNA PERSONA FANTÁSTICA, DE VERDAD!!!!!
(Thank you so so much for being an AWESOME person, really) Translation hehehe.
Eniweis, hope you have a good day/night!
Hey Lily!! Aaron here, thanks so much for supporting me hahaha, really the Aaron is ace tag, really helped me! >:D
Also thanks to my friend and you! I'm way happier!!! ❤️🌊
This is a flower of mine as I don't have pets, hahaha
Aww, thank you so much Aaron for this super sweet ask!
😊 <- literally making that face as I type this
I’m glad that I was able to help you feel more comfortable and confident in your sexuality, that is really such a high compliment. You’re an amazing person, and I’m glad you figured out what you were feeling and felt comfortable enough to tell me (and basically everyone else on tumblr, but 🤫). That just makes my heart so happy!
Thank you so much for the flower, in return I give you the sleepy boys.
Ignore my thick a$$ thigh in the first pic
I've been battling my whole life with trying to find a place for myself that didn't hurt. I would dress up real pretty to go to church and smile while adults touched me when I did not want them to and gave me hugs and kisses on the cheek and told me how proud they were of me. Stale smelling older men who stood just a bit too close and held on a bit too long to a little girl. I was just a doll to all of them, and if it wasn't for them knowing my mama, they never would have cared about me.
My job as a little Christian girl was to look nice, act nice, listen to my parents no matter what, serve God, and most importantly: shut the fuck up. If I wasn't being talked to or cooed at, I was to sit there quietly, looking pretty and waiting until I was useful again as a prop.
I grew up constantly afraid and always more excited to find a new cozy hiding spot in my home than to see my dad back from work. 4pm, every day, I knew where to be, and it was nowhere near the front door, just in case he had a bad day and came in with itchy fists.
I always had my nose in a book from the time I was able to read at age 4 to when I finally learned to live in my actual reality. I wanted nothing but to escape. All the adults around me found it cute that I was so studious and smart and encouraged my escapism, for which I am grateful.
I clawed my way, alone, out of addiction to things that would have eventually killed me and away from the thought that that was taking too long and I should get it over with. I quietly went through an identity crisis every other day before deciding it wasn't worth trying to find a label that fit for sure. I stood my ground when my parents found pictures of me kissing my girlfriend at a school dance that I had forgotten to hide away on my phone. I protected my older brother from my parents' ridicule as he was dying in a hospital bed after trying to kill himself with me, a child, in the same room. I will never be able to forget that as long as I live, the sound my father made when he came into the room and the sight of so much blood.
I've been through hell my whole life, things that could have been prevented if only several horrible people and horrible institutions had been told what they were doing was wrong. If they had been forced to fix the way they thought and forced to put away their fists, most of the horrible things I had to go through would never have had to happen in the first place.
And I will not stand by after I have finally found a place I belong, with people who understand me, while we are being told we don't belong anywhere but with ourselves and told we don't exist in the first place. Even worse when so much of this hate is coming from communities that little me looked up to with stars in their eyes; feminists who fight against the very things that had made my life hell! The LGBTQ+ community itself, where I'd been told that everyone who didn't belong at least belonged there!
Why the fuck is this an issue worth sending teenagers and well-meaning regular joes death threats over and deciding that the authority over other people's identities should come down to popular vote? Who the fuck cares if I don't look at a person most people find hot and want to have sex with them? Who the fuck cares that it takes me a very very very long time to fall in love with someone, if I ever do, and that I don't care much at all for dating or romance for myself?
Why is this such a big issue that deserves negative attention? Am I hurting anyone? Am I risking someone's life I don't know about? Because to my knowledge, all I've been doing is reblogging funny memes on my phone, hanging out with my friends, going to class when necessary, drinking too much tea, and just generally living a normal, boring life!
If you think trying to scare me and mine off the internet and earth for good after all the shit I've been through will be worth your time, you are wrong. We did nothing wrong. We aren't hurting anyone, and last I checked, it seems a stupid waste of time to go boo-hooing around the internet about people who don't have the same relationship with love and sex as you do. I can guarantee that there are plenty of people who aren't aromantic or asexual and also have an irregular relationship with one or both of those things.
Get the fuck over yourself and go do something that makes you happy instead of being a cyberbully and a bigot.
And let me sip my tea in fuckin peace.
12 days of writer self love day 3: repulsed
I know, I know it’s late and out of order, but I’m kind of okay with that. At least it’s here. I really like this piece. I think I almost imagined myself in this situation if I hadn’t found out about my orientation when I did, or if my attraction turned out slightly different
It was an alien and unexpected feeling when it happened the first time. Bendis thought it was attraction, but when the other boy went to kiss him, his initial reaction was to pull away. The other boy, the baker’s son, Francesco, mirrored his action, his eyebrows knitting together in concern.
“Are you okay?” Francesco asked, rubbing the back of Ben’s hand with his thumb.
Ben’s hand went tense under the contact, then relaxed somewhat stiffly. He nodded, swallowed once, then leaned in. “Fine. I’m fine,” they reassured, voice shaking. Francesco pretended not to notice. “Now what were we doing?”
As they kissed, Ben tried not to squirm at the contact and the sheer amount of fluids being exchanged. That night, he lay in a resting patch of his garden and shoveled dirt onto himself as he fell asleep watching the stars.
The next time it happened, they again tried to stifle their reaction. The bard was charismatic and patient, and frankly very good-looking. They’d laughed and joked together for hours, Ben lamenting his lost potential at a similar career path. Ben had even taken a day away from the apothecary to spend time with them.
“It was a pleasure getting to know you, Du Kahoari,” they said, as they raised Ben’s hand to their mouth and pressed a kiss on it.
Ben retracted his hand as calmly as possible, resisting the urge to wipe it on his skirt. Similarly, they hid the tremor in their voice. “Likewise. I wish you happy travels.”
The bard bowed, and as soon as Ben was out of their line of sight, he ran back to the apothecary to wash his hand.
The time after that it wasn’t even happening. It had been a months-long relationship with Sonya the blacksmith’s daughter, so it was bound to come up in conversation. She sat them down on the haybales behind her mother’s shop, taking their hands in her own.
“So, we’ve been together for a while,” she said, pausing to wait for Ben to nod. “So I think it’s time to talk about…”
Ben’s eyes glazed over. His hands went clammy and he pulled back. They tucked their knees against their chest. His breaths came in small bursts. “Say… say that again?”
“...? That’s what I feel like we should talk about,” Sonya said, cautiously now. She shuffled around to face him, careful not to brush their skin.
Swallowing hard, Ben opened his mouth, shut it. His adams apple bobbed again. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk about that,” he managed.
“Okay, that’s okay,” Sonya said, words rushed. “We can take as long as we need.”
Under his breath, Ben asked, “Is this what you want from a relationship?”
Sonya was caught off-guard and stopped moving towards Ben. “I- I think so?”
“Then I don’t think I can be with you,” choked Ben.
“Oh, um,” she stalled. “Are you sure?”
Ben hid his face in his knees. “No,” he said. “I’m not. And if you ask me again, I’ll do it. I’ll say yes. Because it’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”
“Can I touch you?” Ben’s head snapped up at Sonya’s words. He nodded. She placed her hand on their back and rubbed circles into it. “There’s no ‘supposed to’ in any relationship. Relationships are whatever you make of them And if two people want different things, they can compromise. Sometimes that means they keep going as they are. Sometimes that means doing things differently. No one knows what they’re doing all the time. But if you think we don’t work, then we don’t work. That’s okay. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. Okay?”
Ben nodded into his knees.
“Do you need space?”
They nodded again.
“Alright,” Sonya said, groaning as she stretched out of the haystack, pulling a few pieces of straw from where they stuck into her skirt. “I’ll be in my mother’s shop if you need me. And for what it’s worth, these last few months were amazing. I hope they were for you too.”
Shoulders curling inwards, Ben couldn’t bring themself to reply. All his partners, fleeting or long-lasting, affectionate and timid, had been so wonderful. There was no reason for him to feel like this. But he did, and it ate him up inside. They rolled over and screamed into the straw, trying to free himself of the fundamentally wrong feeling inside him.
Figuring out I'm on the ace spectrum was so difficult because I have always been a horny bitch. I knew what sex was at a fairly young age, because I'd asked my mom and she's one of those good parents who'll answer questions like those, and as I grew older and would ask more complex questions, her answers would evolve along with my curiosity and understanding of the world. And I remember having fantasies as young as 9 or 10 years old, even if they were hella vague and nothing close to what sex actually is lol
So as I became a teenager, and all my friends' focus turned from playing with dolls to flirting with boys, I automatically thought I was attracted to boys. And I paid more attention to Cute Boys than I did to Cute Girls, because girls were just nice to look at while boys were People To Have Crushes On. Because of heteronormativity. Looking back on it now, I know there were girls I liked to stare at just as intently as boys, although less often because I wasn't trying to pay attention. And I certainly didn't fantasize about girls because I started reading romance novels in 5th grade, so I was fantasizing about male romantic partners because that was the fiction I was consuming. I didn't even realize fantasizing about girls was possible until I was 17, and I had a few "am I a lesbian" internal crises for years because of it.
So when I did start having sex, I had A LOT OF IT with SO MANY different guys, and eventually a couple of women once I started accepting that bisexuality was real. But it was never really fulfilling. Not like my fantasies were. Not like my books were. I was slutty because sex was fun, I was horny, there were plenty of options so I kept searching for that satisfaction I was craving.
Getting married was a relief (even though it turns out I'm aro-spec too lol) because I was tired of hunting, and even if sex with my husband was meh, at least I had someone around to scratch that itch if I had it, and he didn't mind if I occasionally took care of things on my own because I'd read an especially hot scene in a romance.
I learned about asexuality in my early 20s, but I brushed it off. Couldn't be me, I'm far too horny for that. But I think that comes from the fact that everything you hear about Aces is attached to sex-repulsion or sex-indifference. I wasn't either of those things. I was horny all the dang time. I was fantasizing about sex all the dang time. I figured actual sex was meh because my imagination was so vivid that real life could never match up. Which could be true to an extent, but I think not as much as popular opinion would have us believe. If fantasy was really that much better for everyone, then I think we'd have less incels and unplanned pregnancies than we do.
In my 30s I finally saw people talking about The Spectrum, and I started examining my past, and I figured out I wasn't really attracted to anyone I had sex with. I do occasionally find someone attractive; there are men and women and enbies who make my skin feel tight and give me a little wave of lightheadedness lol... but it's always always the fantasy that gets me really going. If given the opportunity I wouldn't have sex with any of those people. Thank you, but no thank you, I'd rather just imagine it than physically participate in the act with them.
(Ok I might go down on them, but that's less about wanting sex, and more about being able to add them to my Tally. Hell yeah I want to brag about making *insert hot person* have an orgasm. There's PRIDE in that kind of accomplishment lol)
I have a lot of respect for aces that are not horny. I understand it even if I don't share the sentiment. And I feel like most of them understand me even if they don't share the sentiment. There's a solidarity between us.
Until I go into a fandom tag for a character that the aces have glommed onto because they're canonically ace or headcanoned as ace. Good lord, the non-horny aces can turn into downright vicious bastards if a horny ace sexualizes their blorbo.
This post is for them.
Horny aces exist. Please look up "autochorissexual, lithosexual, and aegosexual."
Refer to those definitions in regards to romantic attraction as well as sexual attraction.
Some aces may not fall into one of those definitions, because asexuality is a spectrum, but they may still be horny.
Horny aces are not disrespecting you by enjoying being horny on main. We promise we'll wash the stickiness off our hands before we hold your hands in queer solidarity.
And most importantly: Your blorbo is fictional and does not need to be defended from icky sexuality. They exist in an infinite multiverse, so your blorbo and my blorbo are not the same, even if they appear to be on the surface.
AND:
This post is also for the people who are confused about themselves because they're horny but don't actually feel attraction. You're not crazy, you're not wishy washy, you're not "waiting for the right person to come along" (unless you are, in which case I hope you find them). You're just a thin strip of color on a massive rainbow that holds more unique shades than anyone can perceive at a glance.
You're valid. You're one of us too.
And don't be mean to the non-horny aces. Tag your smut so they can avoid it. (But actually so I can find it lol)
I would love to spend the rest of my life with someone, grow old with them, I would love them, but probably not in the way they would want me to. Maybe someday.
i should’ve known i was ace spec when i went on character ai to be friends with fictional people and nothing else
you know what confuses me
something that has always baffled me is people not wanting you to headcanon a character as ace/aro/aroace because they have a canon attraction but pull out a canonically ace/aro/aroace character and they say “ace/aro/aroace people can still date!1!1! Like the double standard is painful yes it’s a spectrum but can’t you also just like not ship them? Ace, aro, and aro ace spec people are valid but people only seem to remember them when they want to ship a character
Recently found out todays ace day
I got pretty much nothing for ace day
But have a Gray (chuckles in grayaroace/grayrose)
That garlic bread looks really good ngl—
garlic bread to share to your aspec friends :)
rb to share
aspecs are A PART of the LGBTQIA+ community. try to argue cunts.
THIS. This is is. :)
what a great day to remember that all aces and aros belong in the lgbt community
To all my Aro/Ace out there you are loved!!!
CIS MALE AROMANTICS/ASEXUALS, YOUR VALID AND KEEP REMEMBERING THAT!!