And that’s reasonable! Right? It makes sense. Be respectful of the wishes of others. That’s right up there with the Golden Rule of social justice. Do unto others as they would have you do unto them, not as you’d have them do unto you, because the things you’d like may well be different.
But here’s the issue I run into with it:
if you don’t want me to say “the queer community,” what do you want me to say?
Is it LGBTQIA+ community? It’s a mouthful, but it’s what I used in my academic writing.
Is it sexual minority community? Because that always sounds kind of weird, and nobody outside of academia that I’ve met uses it.
Is it QUILTBAG? It’s cutesy but I’ve only seen it used in the wild, like, twice.
Is it LGBT community? Why do you prefer that to LGBTQIA+? Is it just how long it takes to say? What about the people it omits?
If you’re that concerned about the people in the intersex community who aren’t a fan of being grouped in, what about LGBTQA+? Is that still too long? I’ve never seen it used. Why exclude the Q and the A and the + if you wanted the term to be inclusive? Do you believe that asexuality is a) real b) non-cis-het? Do you believe that nonbinary people are legit? How much do you really believe that trans people and bi people are valid?
Is it gay community? Because I am not gay and I’m really, really tired of being told I’m not gay enough or I’m too gay or I’m on the fence and I need to make up my mind or I’m a bihet or I need to shut up about my sexual orientation because I’m just confusing the issue and I’m not really experiencing homophobia anyway or I can’t be experiencing biphobia because that’s not real and I’m just experiencing watered-down homophobia or I married a man so I’m really just straight or I married a man so I’m just in denial that I’m gay and so on ad nauseam, literal ad nauseam, because it’s nauseatingly enraging to be specifically told that I don’t exist, my sexual orientation doesn’t exist. And dear Lord in heaven don’t tell me that I haven’t been told all of those, because I have, and calling me a liar is one quick way to get blocked. I’ve been told I can’t call myself gay, and I’ve been told I have to call myself gay, “part of the gay community”–well, when you’ve been made a roundly unwelcome in the gay community as I have, you get touchy about it. You don’t want to use a word that isn’t right.
And the people who don’t like “queer community” so very, very often seem to prefer “gay community.”
How do we talk about all of us? Not just “how do we talk about all of us, theoretically, in order to not offend any members of the community, whatever we want to call the community”, but “how do we talk about all of us now, and who doesn’t want to talk about all of us”?
Because it’s pretty fucking clear to me that there are plenty of people who don’t think I belong in The Community, whatever we call it; who resent calling it either the LGBTQIA+ community or the queer community; who would prefer to wallpaper over me. There are certainly people who have real issues with the word queer, who’ve had it shouted at them on streets (like I have), who didn’t decide to reclaim it (like I did). But the people getting all up in my shit about it on social media… a lot of them like to talk about the gay community. As if I’m not relevant. As if I didn’t struggle, fight, work, found my school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (there was no room for acknowledging bisexuals even in the club I helped found) back in 2003, get spit on, rocks thrown at me, cursed out, chased, threatened, as if that was all somehow homophobia lite, as if the people doing this didn’t know I was bisexual, didn’t also come up to me and ask for threesomes, didn’t make cracks about watching me with women, didn’t ask what percent gay I was.
I’m not saying I have an answer, here. I’m not saying “let’s all call it the queer community!”
I’m saying there’s a correlation between people who don’t like “the queer community” and people who don’t like me. R may not equal 1, but it’s… pretty damn high. I’d say it’s a correlation coefficient of, like, .85.
If you come up with a label for the community that includes all of us, and that you can get everyone in the community to agree isn’t disrespectful, sign me the fuck up. I’m all for it. But I don’t think you can, because I think the fundamental problem, at the root of this, is that the community is fragmented and splintered. The more acceptable people, the ones who are “just like you!” except gay or lesbian, have a social incentive to push the rest of us away. Throw us under the bus, so the straights think you’re OK by them. Or, hell, refuse to acknowledge us so you don’t have to poke at the awkward, weird bits of your own identity–consider whether genitals mean gender, what it means if someone has no gender or all genders, what attraction and love can be or boil down to or where they end and why.
We’re divided. If we stay this way, no wonder we don’t have the political pull to force change.
I want The Community to be for everyone. I want us all to pull together. And the people who are trying to push the unacceptable ones of us out are harming us all.
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t really WANT to be part of the LGBT community. I’d prefer to just be… nothing. I identify mostly as Not Straight. I’d love to be Queer. People who identify as queer seem to be a bit more open and accepting. But it’s not worth the risk.
I can survive as Not Straight. Quietly saying ‘asexual’ to people, but backing down from confrontation. I’ve spent most of my life not feeling I fit anywhere, and honestly it’s easier to just keep doing that.
my Resting Angry Face, hot ass booty shorts and stockings to show The Boys that i am down. hat on backwards to show my fun, playful side. cooking utensils because this bitch be eating all the time. ‘okay’ bc thats the only word i ever say. also sparkles bc im sitting like this right now and wouldnt you know i feel fresh as fuck.
*intense sweat* This looked fun to participate so… yeah hahah v(´∀｀*v)
ok, these are cute as heck. Lemme try…
Eh, close enough.
Holy molly this is cute af
I like this generaitors so much and this one pretty cool!
[Image is titled, “Fic Writers Alignment Chart.” It is arranged in three rows, with ‘Good’ alignments in the top row, ‘Neutral’ in the second, and ‘Evil’ in the third, and a final option on the bottom. Text:
Lawful Good – writes long fic in full before posting on a regular schedule until finished
Neutral Good – long series of non-chronological fics with loose ties to one another. Well written and with a largely consistent posting schedule
Chaotic Good – just posts short, one-shot stories at random forever – no matter how much the people beg for more
Lawful Neutral – has sequel(s) planned out for a series and is still writing, but takes approximately 5 years to finish it before posting
True Neutral – comes from obscurity to write a single, mind-blowing fic, then fades back into nothing forever
Chaotic Neutral – swans from the void to post updates erratically, but never leaves any real cliffhangers
Lawful Evil – begins long angst-fic with inconsistent update schedule before abandoning the fic for good after posting a cliffhanger
Neutral Evil – has a compilation post of ‘fics I will never write’ to tease everyone. Every last one is an amazing idea
Chaotic Evil – has 17 different long-fics begun and unfinished, some several years old. Will occasionally break from their current work to post a single chapter for one at random leaving a worse cliffhanger than before
Pure, Unadulterated Evil – has several chapters after their latest cliffhanger full of author notes and side tangents before abandoning their story forever and marking it complete without tagging it as an abandoned work
@galaxystew is closest to True Neutral, because even though she has written other fic, I didn’t discover it until later and it’s in different fandoms to her magnum opus
@oh-mother-of-darkness is apparently Chaotic Good, but this is a lie. Personally, I would switch the definitions of Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Good around to punish her
@wolveroonie is True Neutral. Because we’re scary.
@tabithian is Chaotic Neutral. I originally said Lawful Evil, but there is no angst more may one day come, and Tabithian is way too wonderful to ever be evil. Even her evil villains are adorable!
[Image is titled, “Fic Writers Alignment Chart.” It is arranged in three rows, with ‘Good’ alignments in the top row, ‘Neutral’ in the second, and ‘Evil’ in the third, and a final option on the bottom. Text:
Lawful Good – writes long fic in full before posting on a regular schedule until finished
Neutral Good – long series of non-chronological fics with loose ties to one another. Well written and with a largely consistent posting schedule
Chaotic Good – just posts short, one-shot stories at random forever – no matter how much the people beg for more
Lawful Neutral – has sequel(s) planned out for a series and is still writing, but takes approximately 5 years to finish it before posting
True Neutral – comes from obscurity to write a single, mind-blowing fic, then fades back into nothing forever
Chaotic Neutral – swans from the void to post updates erratically, but never leaves any real cliffhangers
Lawful Evil – begins long angst-fic with inconsistent update schedule before abandoning the fic for good after posting a cliffhanger
Neutral Evil – has a compilation post of ‘fics I will never write’ to tease everyone. Every last one is an amazing idea
Chaotic Evil – has 17 different long-fics begun and unfinished, some several years old. Will occasionally break from their current work to post a single chapter for one at random leaving a worse cliffhanger than before
Pure, Unadulterated Evil – has several chapters after their latest cliffhanger full of author notes and side tangents before abandoning their story forever and marking it complete without tagging it as an abandoned work
Hey so it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything other than drabbles but I couldn’t get this out of my head. Based largely on Robin #46 and a few other comic moments / headcanon I’ve seen around on Tumblr lately. Also my own ongoing existential crisis of sorts, and if I’m suffering why not make my favourite characters suffer too. Only briefly edited, so apologies for any mistakes.
[Title from: Make it Stop (September’s Children) by Rise Against]
Summary: It’s been a couple of months since Tim’s had a proper existential crisis; he was long overdue.
Terrifying depression/suicidal ideation fic. Well, only terrifying in that I’ve felt like this so many times, and it’s too real. Nothing actually happens. Because depression is all about nothing happening, for extended periods of time. Including living. It’s just existing and staring at your hands abstractly.
Ellana has been staring out at the middle distance for the past half hour, her feet up on Bull’s lap as he tries to navigate through the latest RPG game everyone says he has to try. So far what he’s learned is that he has no patience for captions and scroll through dialogue, and he’s lost almost all patience he’s ever had with this particular style of animation.
Bull would probably be more concerned about Ellana’s dead silence and staring into the distance if it weren’t something that elves are somehow genetically predisposition to.
Solas used to debate internally. Surana wages mental wars. Merrill wonders. Fenris brood poetically. Sera ponders. Ellana plots.
This is great bonding time. Bull gets to sit here and doubt the tastes of everyone they know, Ellana sits in silence and thinks about the truest mysteries of the world and how to best rip them out into the bright light of day and flay them open for all to see. Sometimes Ellana will come out of these moments of staring with profound declarations like people are the harvests of trees and when your bones crack that means your flesh suit is ripe.
They are as equally disturbing as they are, somehow, a little bit true.
“I think we should have the sex,” is what Ellana comes up with today and Bull drops the controller because he knows he didn’t hear her wrong. He’s forty seven with one eye, eight fingers and a bum ankle, not deaf and senile.
Bull slowly turns to look at her and Ellana is staring right back at him, completely at ease with the declaration she’s just thrown out at him.
“You don’t have to call it the sex,” Bull says.
“It’s like when you plan the wedding or the honeymoon,” Ellana says, “You only have it once and it’s supposed to be a big momentous thing. Otherwise it would be awedding or a honeymoon. Or – like you get in the car, not you get in a car. Because if you tell me to get into a car I’d just break into whichever car I happen to like and is most convenient for hot wiring. If you tell me to get into the car I know you mean our car.”
“Alright, that’s fair but – why?” Bull asks.
“Because there’s absolutely no way,” Ellana says, crossing her arms and sitting up a little, “Absolutely none in this entire universe, in this dimension, in this plane of existence, in this or any other reality, that Cullen and Evelyn regularly having sex has changed them this radically as people. They relax now. Evelyn seemed to suggest, while we were talking with the others, that this is a byproduct of regular orgasm. I sincerely doubt that. There are too many flaws to that argument. I mean – I’m sure Solas had regular sex back ye olden days, but he still lost all his hair.”
“I don’t think those things are related,” Bull says, “I didn’t lose my hair from stress.”
“No, you shaved it off because you’re a very simple man of elegant tastes,” Ellana replies. “Anyway. I think we should try the sex.”
“Because you want to test the theory of Cullen and Evelyn not being stressed due to getting laid regularly?” Bull asks, eyebrows raising. “I don’t see why you have to personally test it. We know plenty of people who do and don’t get sex regularly. You could just observe.”
Bull isn’t saying this to avoid having sex with Ellana. He’s saying this because he knows that there’s some other motive and Ellana is using this as a partial excuse. He can see it in her eyes.
“Well,” Ellana says, drawing herself up a little, chin raising just a bit and Bull gets ready for the most entertaining and baffling few minutes of his life, “You like sex. I like you. So…maybe we should have sex.”
“I also like you,” Bull says, “And sex has nothing to do with it. I mean, you like eating jam straight out of the jar. I get a stomach ache watching you do it. I’m not actually going to start eating jam out of a jar with you.”
“You’re the best at the sex,” Ellana says, trying a new approach, “If anyone is going to make this experiment work it’s you. And I can’t rely on anyone else you sleep with because you don’t really see them regularly enough for me to gather data. And I don’t know what they’re like aside from what you tell me or what I happen to guess based on the extremely rare times I’ve actually run across them in like – the real adult people world. And they’re usually either not aware of me or they book it like I’m about to light them on fire. Which is incredibly ridiculous, by the way. You don’t even tell most of them about me, I don’t know how they know.”
“You’re somewhat famous, babe,” Bull says, bending down to get the controller. “For serious, though, why do you have to personally test this theory?”
Ellana’s nose scrunches and then she says, “Because Evelyn said I wouldn’t get it.”
Ah, Bull rolls his eye and settles back, returning to the video game, “I can’t believe she told you that. It’s like she practically dared you to have – “ Bull pauses and then mentally shrugs “ the sex.”
“I know,” Ellana says, “I can totally have the sex. Who says I can’t have the sex? We should have the sex.”
“To prove Evelyn wrong. And to prove that sex doesn’t magically change you into a not-anxious and constantly high strung mess of a person,” Bull says.
“Exactly my thoughts,” Ellana says, and she keeps staring at him. Bull’s hands pause on the controls.
“What, you meant now?”
“No,” Ellana says, “Later? Tomorrow? Sometime during the week? When is good for you? How do people do this? Bull, how do you do this with other people.”
“Normally I pick them up at a bar, or I get picked up at a bar,” Bull says, “I’m not taking you to a bar so I can pick you up and then drive you back here.”
“That’s a waste of gas and also a terrible thing to do to the environment,” Ellana nods, lying down, shuffling herself on the couch so that her legs are further on Bull’s lap, the backs of her thighs against his left leg. Bull uses her shins as armrests. “We can just do it here.”
“Any special requests?” Bull asks.
“No role-play,” Ellana says immediately, “Because that’s a little silly to me and I would maybe laugh too hard and we’d never actually get started.”
“Alright,” Bull says. It would be a little weird to try that on her, given the circumstances. “Anything else?”
“The rest we play by ear,” Ellana replies, sitting up and kissing his cheek, pulling her legs back and standing up, “Save now, you’re about to hit a hidden boss fight. I watched Dorian play this like, four times, already. You’re doing way better than him, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Bull says, and then waits until she’s out of the living room and he hears her go up the stairs, the door to their room opening and closing.
He immediately pauses the game, pulls out his phone and calls Evelyn.
“I can’t believe you told her that she wouldn’t get sex,” Bull says as soon as Evelyn picks up, “You couldn’t have just told her that it’s a you and Cullen thing? Because now I’m going to have sex with her so she can test your theory of Ellana wouldn’t get why Evelyn and Cullen are so weirdly relaxed now that they’re fucking because she’s asexual.”
Evelyn sputters, “What?”
“We’re going to have the sex she says,” Bull continues, “Out of nowhere. I’m too old for these bombshells to be dropped on me without warning. I mean, sure, yeah, I guess we could have sex but also – you just had to dare her. Really? We’ve known each other for years and you still forget that you can’t just tell Ellana these kind of things because she’ll take it as a personal challenge?”
“Did you tell her no?”
“What? No. Why would I tell her no?” Bull asks, “I don’t have a problem with having sex with my wife and life-partner. I mean, sure, we’ve never had sex before, but that isn’t the point. My point is that we’ve all known each other for almost ten years and you still though the worlds you wouldn’t get it aren’t the magic buzzer to throwing Ellana off the obsessive deep end? I am beyond disappointed in you.”
This is why asexuals write the best stories. A perfect representation of why people have sex. And how to negotiate it.
kiragecko 