It’s Relatively Popular So You Might Have Already, But In Case You Haven’t: 

Bucky: I can kill someone with anything in this room.

Peter: weird flex, but okay

Bucky: Flexing is only one of the ways.

Peter: Wait, What? Can you show me? Mr. Stark come and see this!!!

I need to rant.

The thing about being aromantic, asexual, or on the spectrums that a lot of people don’t seem to get is that compulsory sexuality exists.

Not just compulsory heterosexuality. Compulsory sexuality. Period. The idea that every person on the planet feels some kind of sexual and romantic attraction.

I grew up watching media, same as all of you, and how are people that are interested in purely sexual relationships depicted? As cold people. As cheaters. Usually it’s a straight man looking to use women. His character development almost always includes settling down. And people that don’t experience sexual attraction? Characters like Data from Star Trek or Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Androids and characters coded as having a very specific type of autism. And even they have sexuality forced upon them by the writers at least once. With Data it happens in the second episode.

And then we try to explain this to people. Why we hurt ourselves and put ourselves in dangerous and uncomfortable situations trying to fix ourselves. Make ourselves feel sexual and/or romantic attraction. We bring up the bullying we endured. The things our therapists tried to fix about us. We talk about our trauma related to compulsory sexuality and you all just don’t hear us.

I’m so tired of it. I’ve been fighting the fight to be seen since I was fourteen! I’ve given talks in GSAs. I’ve written essays to educate. I’ve comforted other asexual people on the internet and irl. I’ve scraped and grabbed for community. I’ve done my very best to fight to be seen. I’ve healed from the trauma I put myself through in trying to fix myself. I’ve realized that I don’t need to be fixed. I’ve been as goddamned involved as an asexual person can be with the resources we have. I may be young but I have been fighting longer than most and I am so protective of the people just realizing that they’re aro or ace or demi or anything else. No matter how much older or younger they are than me.

And then some people on the internet decide that they get to undo everything I and so many other asexual and aromantic people have done. They get to decide that their trauma is more real than mine. They get to push me and my brothers and sisters and siblings out the door because they don’t see invisibility as oppression. They’ve held up their little sign that says “must be this oppressed to enter” and then held it up higher so that we didn’t fit.

Some of them told me “oh you can come in because you tick these boxes but that other box doesn’t count”

No. That box definitely counts. That box is just as much a part of me as any of the others and it is the one I have fought for the longest. Our community won’t be made invisible again. Invisibility is crushing. It is suffocating. Abuse and hatred of all kinds thrive in silence.

I feel alone sometimes. Like I am the only soldier holding a banner in front of a stone wall. But I am not alone, and you aren’t either. I’m tired of being casual. I’m tired of being seen as a rarity. A novelty. An android. A nuisance. I am none of these things. I, like every other arospec or aspec person, am a friend of dragons. Something that was hidden for so long, protecting itself and what it loves, but has the ability to be loud, dangerous, firey.

Asexual and aromantic people have been polite. Quiet. Because that’s what we feel we have to be. We can’t protest by kissing someone in front of a picket line. What can we do then? Talk. Write. Wear our colors. If we have to keep being polite and quiet about it, fine. That’s how we do. But let’s not be invisible. I will continue to let everyone that knows me understand under no uncertain terms that I am asexual. I will point to our aromantic siblings, sisters, brothers. I will tell you to look at them. Look at us. We exist. We are wonderful. We belong. In queer spaces, in the media, in the public eye.

If you are aro or ace people will tell you that they don’t care. They will ask why they need to know. But being yourself is a radical act. I know it is. We are often polite in this community. We don’t rally. We don’t look to change the world. We don’t depict ourselves as radical or challenging the establishment, but we are. We are. We have been from the moment we realized we exist. Our history is small. We are creating the early stages of it as we speak, but it is still rich. It is still beautiful. Even if we are spread out, I love this community so deeply. So completely. I probably won’t ever be a leader in this community or any other one. That’s not where my talents lie. But I will continue to push for us to be seen. I will write literature for us. I will talk. I will be as visible as someone like me can be. I will fight to make the words ace and aro and demi and grey just as well known as gay, ace, lesbian, bi, trans.

And there are so many of us out there doing the same. We are not alone. We have never been alone. And these people trying to make us alone won’t succeed. I know this. I feel it in my gut.

Thanks for listening to me rant.

Fenris: “I may not get the chance to say this again, meeting you was the most important thing that ever happened to me Hawke. Promise me you won’t die, I can’t bare the thought of living without you.” Hawke: “I didn’t quite catch that, could you speak up~?” Fenris: “Then let me make it clearer for you.” Me:

So I’ve just recently started reading Noragami after watching the anime a couple months ago, and the whole time I can’t stop making comparisons to the Legend of Eli Monpress and seeing similarities in several of the characters. Putting most of this under a cut because there’s only a few of you who have read Eli Monpress, and also because my lovely roommate/bestie has only just started reading Eli Monpress and there’s gonna be some later novel spoilers in here. 

Keep reading

Is it just me or do you tend to slow down when ur almost done with a REALLY good fanfic?? Like you don’t want it to end so you start distracting yourself and just read a couple paragraphs at a time before you go on Instagram or something to stop yourself from finishing the fic and you keep doing that until you have no more self control and just fucking zoom through the rest and get really sad bc you think you’ll never find another fic as good as the one you just read. No...? Just me? Okay...

Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husband (from Jin Guangyao)–3zun’s gonna run this town, tonight. ✌

I have more of these headcanons if anyone wants me to write them out. Give me a push and I will go gladly into that dark night.

let’s talk about racism in the danmei fandom

alright so originally i wrote this for twitter, but i felt like tumblr could benefit from it too. today we’re finally getting the long awaited “deconstruction of racism in the danmei fandom” post. and lemme preface this by saying- i’m chinese-american. i’m nblm. i do, in fact, have the cultural and historical background to know what i am talking about. so let’s get into it. 

this is gonna be a long post, because we have a lot to talk about. first, racism doesn’t have to be as blatant as calling me a chink, or saying all asians look the same, or not wanting to consume asian media, or making ching chong jokes.racism can be as subtle towards asians as it can towards any other race. if you think i shouldn’t have to say that, join the club, bc same. 

second, racism towards asians, especially in the west, has a long history of being overlooked and accepted. now, let’s talk about how racism dictates some of the takes you see in the fandom. firstly, what originally inspired this thread- the mxtx rumors and the jokes being made about her and censorship. now, obvs some ppl are gonna say that they were just jokes made in poor taste. and, sure. but they were jokes made in poor taste, steeped in racism. the jokes being made about mxtx going to jail happen bc ppl do not view her as a real person. not rlly. she’s an author, sure, the author of one of their favorite novels, but she’s not, like. a person with thoughts and feelings and a life. and that sort of casual lack of humanhood and agency given to danmei authors is rooted in the severely racist dehumanization of asians that’s prevalent in the west. this is something that can be seen other places, too- a good example being when parasite was notably nominated for every oscar category *except* the acting ones. 

it’s this lack of personhood, this lack of agency, that allows ppl to have takes like “censorship isn’t actually bad, and here’s why”. yes, this is a real take that i saw. this take argues that the cql is better than mdzs, bc it is “softer and less graphic”. in general, a lot of ppl have the take that mxtx’s works in particular are too graphic, with problematic sexual elements. now, i’ve talked before about how that’s a homophobic take bc gay relationships should also be allowed to be messy. but it’s also deeply entrenched in racism. it’s why white gays can have the take “this is Problematique and here’s why” and claim it’s not homophobic. 

racism against asians has long since created a trend of sexualizing them- thinking asian men are sexy while also removing their sexual agency. asian men can be sexy, but they can’t actually *have sex*. not explicitly. there’s a historical, real world element to this. “not fats no femmes no asians” could definitely be seen on ppls grindr profiles, back in the day. asians can be sexy, sure. look at kpop boys. but they can’t be sexual. they’re infantilized. they have to remain pure and wholesome, or they’re dragged as problematic and homophobic and fetishizing, a word that’s thrown around so often it’s practically lost meaning. fetishizing is my ex-bf telling me i’m sexy bc* i’m asian, it’s bl/yaoi fans approaching a gay couple on the bus and gushing over how “cute and yaoi they are.” fetishizing is *not* showing your 2 male main charas having explicit sex. if it is, then every white fan in danmei is fetishizing asians. 

but i digress- back to the point about racism. the fact that ppl can argue about censorship shows that they, as a whole, aren’t considering the ramifications of censorship on the literal country it exists in, and it’s citizens. i, obvs, do not live in china. but i’ve got relatives who do, and who did. i’ve got relatives who fled china. not everything is about you and the media you want to consume. and then, of course, there’s the casual racism. the everyday racism. the racism that lies in things like saying all the names are too similar and it’s hard to keep track of them. the racism in saying things like “i’m just here to have fun,,,like sure, i’d persevere through dostoevsky, but this is danmei”, as if danmei is somehow inferior, as if danmei isn’t meant to be critically engaged with, as if danmei doesn’t tackle and critically explore some of the deepest and darkest issues. 

asian media is often presented that way, from kung fu movies to danmei. there is a type of racism, of eurocentrism, that exists in the belief that western media has deeper, more engaging morals. asian media is more “fun”. asian media is almost entirely based on morals and deep thought, it’s just not based in western ones. for example, two of my favorite authors are haruki murakami and kazuo ishiguro. both are japanese authors, who’s works i’ve heard westerners describe as weird and without a point, when in fact they are simply telling stories with innately eastern asian morals and teachings. it’s the same type of racism that causes ppl to make jokes about asian food, to not view it as a craft the same way they do french food. it’s asian- it must be “less than”, be inferior, be inherently not worth as much. 

casual racism about asians is normalized, which isn’t a word i use often. it’s normalized to the point where ppl don’t even realize they have that sort of implicit bias, and we know ppl don’t rlly come on the internet to think critically. but unintentional racism is still racism. it still has an impact, still does damage. ppl need to think intentionally and critically in how they consume and interact with media not made for them, but they don’t, instead choosing to come in with their preexisting biases, and bc of that, it’s easy for fandom members to dismiss the cultural concerns of chinese ppl within the fandom. it’s easy, for example, to say “calling them martial brothers is incest apologism”, ignoring the inherent cultural roots of martial brothers. 

now, we’re gonna get in to the current “drama”. i do not ship chengxian. i think that even bears repeating. i Do Not ship chengxian. i have written them, in a modern au, as adopted brothers. but there is a real historical and culture relevance to the idea of martial brothers, of community, that westerners willfully refuse to hear, claiming instead that “you’re disregarding adopted families!” no. that’s not what’s happening at all. what’s happening is ppl are refusing to look at their own, western bias, and placing western values on an eastern idea. community raising of children, community family bonds without being adopted families, is important in east asian culture. there is a long history of community being whats important, and ppl don’t get that you can be a “communal/community family” without being considered familial. jyl choosing to view wwx as her brother, bc he is a martial brother, and chengxian being in love, are things that can technically coexist. whether or not you choose to perceive them as such, refusing to acknowledge the real history of martial brothers, and scremaing “incest apologism” whenever someone tries to explain it, is inherently racist. it’s you assuming you know my culture better than me. it’s you assuming your western ideas are the only ones that exist. which is, at its core, the basis for most racism in the danmei fandom. 

most racism in the danmei fandom comes from this idea that casual racism against asians isn’t *really* racism, and therefore asians don’t *really* get to have a say, and it shouldn’t matter anyway bc we’re lucky you’re even engaging with danmei, with asian content, since it’s shallow and inferior anyway. the racism comes from a place of moral superiority, of ownership, of this assumption that westerners are entitled to not just consume danmei but also bring their western lens and apply it to something that was never written for them in the first place.

The Mermaid of Lily Lake by Andy Ivanov

So after spending most of this afternoon and evening having been sucked down the rabbit hole that is TV Tropes, I found this SUPERB description of Jim Butchers Codex Alera series of books:

“Magical Roman Legionnaires straight out of Avatar: The Last Airbender versus the Zerg, wolfmen with Blood Magic, telepathic yetis and white-haired elves. Riding ground sloths and terror birds. Sometimes, the Legionnaires fight each other, too.“

Yup, just as awesome as that sounds ;)