Now, to clean the things.
You guys, I feel like a fic-finishing and obligation-meeting machine right now.
Not that I actually am, but I got my
remix_duello fic in on time! I was going "OMG REMIXING IS HARD FOLKS" but then I realized, hey, wait, it's a remix, that means whenever I get stuck I can just crib from the original, which is *awesome*. It is probably not great by the standards of real remix connoisseurs, and I may have stretched the boundaries of what counts as a remix too much, but I'm (mostly) happy with it, and hay, meeting of deadlines happened, which means, because the AO3 challenge set-up is awesome, I now have a couple of no-pressure weeks to keep tinkering with it. Also I am looking at the melee prompts and trying to convince myself I don't need to start stories for any of them, no matter how much I want to, because I still have way too many other works in progress, plus kink_bingo and who knows what else.
I did, however, finish a five-month-standing WIP on the lolitics meme! And guys, guys, OMG, this is the first time I have *ever* finished something I started posting as a WIP and didn't finish within that first push of energy. I usually try to stay anon on these things at least for awhile but I kind of want to just strew sparkles around in general.
Also said story was coming-out and GLBT-activism themed, so it seems like a good segue into talking about Coming Out Day. Coming Out Day, as a day set up to help people claim a GLBT identity, always left me feeling left out and confused even as I was happy for the people who did come out. Because it took me a long time to find an identity I felt like I could claim. And even now that I'm fairly comfortable with it in myself? I still feel like I can't come out, like I don't belong in the coming-out narrative.
But, screw it. If I can write a fictional character's coming out, I can write my own. So, hi! You've probably already figured it out, but I don't know if I've ever exactly announced it before, so: I'm asexual, which means I have never experienced sexual attraction to anyone, male or female or other; and I'm aromantic, which means I've never particularly wanted to have a romantic relationship, or really understood what the point of them are.
IDing as ace, particularly outside spaces that are already familiar with the idea, has its own issues. There are all the people who think it's an excuse or a cry for attention or an attempt to co-opt queer identities or being in denial; or think it means you're sick or repressed or traumatized or had bad experiences and need a cure (if you're lucky, this response results in psychiatric recommendations; if you're not, it results in sexual assault); or you're fat and ugly and just can't get a partner; or they have never heard of the idea and want long-winded explanations or to talk you out of it. And there are the people who think they do know what it means, and hear "asexual" and assume that means you have no libido, or are repulsed by sex or anti-sex on principle, or have sworn never to have any kind of long-term partnership or marriage. (All of those things apply to some asexuals. None apply to me.)
And even if you can trust the people around you to be supportive, admitting - to yourself and to your friends - that you're asexual means closing doors. It means that no, you're never going to really understand what everybody's so obsessed about. That you're never going to be able to truly fit in to the conversations about sex and romance and crushes. That all the ways, small and large, in which society assumes people have partners and makes the path easier for them, are going to leave you out in the cold and fighting. That even if you do beat the odds and find someone to life-partner with, in whatever way works for you, it will never be the way you were told it was supposed to be.
Which is why I've never really done the "coming out" thing before. Because when announcing I'm asexual - even in a space I trust to be pretty friendly - requires three paragraphs of caveats and explanations? It is so much easier just to stay mum and let people make assumptions. Even when that means basically cutting yourself off from having any close RL relationships at all, like it did for me for a long time.
Anyway! I am also well in to finishing my
intobar fic, weeks and weeks before the deadline! ...is there anybody who knows both Top Gear and Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars who wants to be first reader for ~3000 words worth of crossover? Since I actually have breathing space for a first reader, for once? (I suspect there *is* nobody else who's in to both Top Gear and Alan Mendelsohn, though.)
All of the above means I'm officially better off in terms of deadlines and missed deadlines hanging over my head than I was at the beginning of the summer! \o/ (By any sane standards, I'm still about to be buried, but I'm so used to that state of affairs that any lessening feels amazing.)
Also,
common_nature seems to have picked up enough momentum that it might just keep rolling on its own, so I don't have that hanging over me as much either! Now I have to resist the temptation to start more communities. (The rules is no starting new communities until scheduled posting happens. No matter how much I want there to be
materiality, the common_nature sister community for man-made stuff - and
more_cowbell, the music sharing community for people whose main criteria for acquiring music is "I can't believe somebody actually thought it was a good idea to record that!")
And I'm, like, 75% caught up on my LibraryThing Recently-Read Reviews! Amazing. There's still, like, a whole pile of cryptozoology books, and a whole pile of Star Trek novels, and the read-not-owned list, and a huge pile of started-but-not-finished, but I am amazed that I actually broke through the block and did it at all.
Also, while I was organizing files & stuff around my new hard drive, I went ahead and updated my AO3 account and my DeviantArt account. My dA account has about a year's worth of mostly fanart added, most of which I never posted to this journal. There is some Top Gear and some Doctor Who and some of my original characters and some fiber crafts and etc.
I waver back and forth on doing more with my dA account; on the one hand, it is nice to have a place that's for visual art the way this place is for textual, and wandering there inspires me to work on my own drawing more, but on the other hand, dA's administration is pretty damn faily and has a long history of it, and it feels hypocritical to be getting more into dA when I've stormed out of LJ over much the same issues.
Does anybody know if there's a site that is to dA as DW is to LJ? At least as much ease of use, committed membership, and less admin fail? 'cause that would be nice. (Then all I'd have to do is find my stylus and maybe I'd finish more art and post it!)
Also if anybody's got a dA account and wants more watchers, let me know? I am bad at finding people but I do like having galleries to watch.
...I was going to post about the new stories on my AO3 account, but this post is already too long, so, um, later. Also, I need to stay strong and not take a week or so's worth of being on top of things, and spoil it by signing up for NaNo.
Not that I actually am, but I got my
I did, however, finish a five-month-standing WIP on the lolitics meme! And guys, guys, OMG, this is the first time I have *ever* finished something I started posting as a WIP and didn't finish within that first push of energy. I usually try to stay anon on these things at least for awhile but I kind of want to just strew sparkles around in general.
Also said story was coming-out and GLBT-activism themed, so it seems like a good segue into talking about Coming Out Day. Coming Out Day, as a day set up to help people claim a GLBT identity, always left me feeling left out and confused even as I was happy for the people who did come out. Because it took me a long time to find an identity I felt like I could claim. And even now that I'm fairly comfortable with it in myself? I still feel like I can't come out, like I don't belong in the coming-out narrative.
But, screw it. If I can write a fictional character's coming out, I can write my own. So, hi! You've probably already figured it out, but I don't know if I've ever exactly announced it before, so: I'm asexual, which means I have never experienced sexual attraction to anyone, male or female or other; and I'm aromantic, which means I've never particularly wanted to have a romantic relationship, or really understood what the point of them are.
IDing as ace, particularly outside spaces that are already familiar with the idea, has its own issues. There are all the people who think it's an excuse or a cry for attention or an attempt to co-opt queer identities or being in denial; or think it means you're sick or repressed or traumatized or had bad experiences and need a cure (if you're lucky, this response results in psychiatric recommendations; if you're not, it results in sexual assault); or you're fat and ugly and just can't get a partner; or they have never heard of the idea and want long-winded explanations or to talk you out of it. And there are the people who think they do know what it means, and hear "asexual" and assume that means you have no libido, or are repulsed by sex or anti-sex on principle, or have sworn never to have any kind of long-term partnership or marriage. (All of those things apply to some asexuals. None apply to me.)
And even if you can trust the people around you to be supportive, admitting - to yourself and to your friends - that you're asexual means closing doors. It means that no, you're never going to really understand what everybody's so obsessed about. That you're never going to be able to truly fit in to the conversations about sex and romance and crushes. That all the ways, small and large, in which society assumes people have partners and makes the path easier for them, are going to leave you out in the cold and fighting. That even if you do beat the odds and find someone to life-partner with, in whatever way works for you, it will never be the way you were told it was supposed to be.
Which is why I've never really done the "coming out" thing before. Because when announcing I'm asexual - even in a space I trust to be pretty friendly - requires three paragraphs of caveats and explanations? It is so much easier just to stay mum and let people make assumptions. Even when that means basically cutting yourself off from having any close RL relationships at all, like it did for me for a long time.
Anyway! I am also well in to finishing my
All of the above means I'm officially better off in terms of deadlines and missed deadlines hanging over my head than I was at the beginning of the summer! \o/ (By any sane standards, I'm still about to be buried, but I'm so used to that state of affairs that any lessening feels amazing.)
Also,
And I'm, like, 75% caught up on my LibraryThing Recently-Read Reviews! Amazing. There's still, like, a whole pile of cryptozoology books, and a whole pile of Star Trek novels, and the read-not-owned list, and a huge pile of started-but-not-finished, but I am amazed that I actually broke through the block and did it at all.
Also, while I was organizing files & stuff around my new hard drive, I went ahead and updated my AO3 account and my DeviantArt account. My dA account has about a year's worth of mostly fanart added, most of which I never posted to this journal. There is some Top Gear and some Doctor Who and some of my original characters and some fiber crafts and etc.
I waver back and forth on doing more with my dA account; on the one hand, it is nice to have a place that's for visual art the way this place is for textual, and wandering there inspires me to work on my own drawing more, but on the other hand, dA's administration is pretty damn faily and has a long history of it, and it feels hypocritical to be getting more into dA when I've stormed out of LJ over much the same issues.
Does anybody know if there's a site that is to dA as DW is to LJ? At least as much ease of use, committed membership, and less admin fail? 'cause that would be nice. (Then all I'd have to do is find my stylus and maybe I'd finish more art and post it!)
Also if anybody's got a dA account and wants more watchers, let me know? I am bad at finding people but I do like having galleries to watch.
...I was going to post about the new stories on my AO3 account, but this post is already too long, so, um, later. Also, I need to stay strong and not take a week or so's worth of being on top of things, and spoil it by signing up for NaNo.

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It is so nice to have something resembling an actual asexual community around here, I can't even say.
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(P.S.: For the first time, I should probably add.)
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Also,
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I can't wait for asexual awareness to get to the point where being ace one of the coming out options.
I was thinking of Coming Out Day yesterday, when I was hosting Thanksgiving and my apartment was full of close friends, and I thought 'I could come out to them now'. If I were gay, I could have easily said "I just want to let you know, what with it being coming out day and all, that I'm gay." And they would have just gone with it.
But I was stuffed with good food and really didn't feel like having a whole conversation about what asexual was, and how that worked, and what about that boy you dated a while ago?
I'm out online, because it's easier to explain it all in text and links. It just requires so much effort to do it in person.
And even if you can trust the people around you to be supportive, admitting - to yourself and to your friends - that you're asexual means closing doors
Huh. Never really though of that, but it's interesting. I'm going to have to go away and think on that for a while.
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With asexuality, though... I feel like if I came out as lesbian? With my group of friends, yeah I wouldn't pass as het anymore and many things would be hard, but in the general social group, I would just get recategorized from the "people who fancy men" group to the "people who fancy women" group, and I would still have a place in all the sexuality-focused bonding rituals and whatever. Whereas coming out as asexual puts me firmly on the outside.
I mean, I'm already out enough - by which I mean I have RL friends who read this journal - that I've had the experience of randomly agreeing that someone or something is hot, and getting the weird looks and "but I thought you were asexual" response. Or mentioning that I'm going somewhere fun with one other person, or telling someone that I think they look attractive in that outfit, or daydreaming about wedding plans... Luckily in fandom that doesn't happen so much, because we're used to talking about those things in ways that don't necessarily peg to sexual attraction, but in RL? It sucks.
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For me, coming out as asexual let me embrace the parts of my not-sexuality that I did want to participate in. I had everything all tied together, and didn't want to put up with the sex just to get the other things. Once I realized that I was asexual, and that I was actually different, I found it easier to make the effort to get what I wanted. It was easier for me to say 'I'm asexual, I do want this other thing' instead of saying 'I don't want to have sex with you, but I do want this other thing', which didn't really seem fair to the other person if everything was all tied together.
I guess I've felt like I was already on the outside, but having a label makes it legitimate, instead of just being greedy/demanding/uncaring towards others. Just like how the label of introvert made it easier for me to take the alone time I needed without feeling like I was being rude ('It's not the fact that you're you personally, it's the fact that you're a person generally that makes me need to not be around you right now.')
But then again, most of my friends I'm out to are fannish in some way, and I have another year or two before people are going to start wondering why I'm not in a relationship of some sort, so most of my musings have been able to be internally focused. Your perspective has given me a lot to think about.
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I think, though, I didn't shut those doors you did nearly as early? I spent most of my life thinking that eventually I would be grown-up and I'd understand grown-up stuff, and then I'd want a boyfriend and I'd get married, and once I was done with school I'd have time to concentrate on learning all those rituals I never wanted to bother with, and--. Since I hit puberty about three years late, and I was always socially off-center, it seemed reasonable to keep waiting. It's only in the last three or four years that I have decided it was time to stop waiting because it was never going to magically happen.
Finding the label - coming out to myself - has been wonderful. It's coming out to everybody else that's scary sometimes.
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I knoow what you mean. It's also, there is such a variety in asexuality that simply coming out as ace doesn't necessarily tell the person much. Like, knowing that someone is asexual tells you nothing about whether or not they want a romantic relationship, who they'd want it with, whether or not they (would) have sex, etc. To answer some of those questions I'd have to tell people I'm greyhomoromantic repulsed asexual... none of which are terms in common use (and I sort of suspect I'm the only one who uses 'greyhomoromantic', for that matter, o god my romantic orientation wry) and damnit, when I want to come out I don't want to have to do Asex 101.
That said, things have improved SO MUCH over the past few years, I think. Like, I have actually come out as ace (just ace) to people and have them have heard of that before. I've actually met two other ace people IRL! And we have a community of sorts, even outside of AVEN, and all. And online at least it seems to be becoming more well-known. I just hope visibility continues to grow.
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But I cannot understand why you need to make a special fuss about that or put it on some level entirely different from friends-and-family love and relationships or all of those other things that people put in to the word "romance." I finally decided that, as that's pretty much the same way I cannot understand sexual attraction, I am probably also aromantic.
But if you ID as aromantic ace that often gets translated as "does not want a life partner at all", and, just, arrrg.
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It does sound somewhat like what you're saying, and... I suppose I could ID as aromantic, but it doesn't quite ring true to me because I *do* want a life partner and a close emotional relationship with them and raising kids (although no cuddling or sex but I'm pretty touch-averse as a rule) and things that are not usually considered to be part of the friendship package, and much as I rail about how we limit friendship it feels as if IDing as aromantic will lead to misunderstandings. (And I've seen a lot of aromantic people talk about wanting to live on their own and valuing their independence and other things I just don't identify with at all.) Also, well, the relationship I'm looking for comes with a distinct gender preference and it's not opposite-gender which would probably be assumed as the default... and I do consider that an important part of my orientation. Ergo, greyhomoromantic.
...and thinking about it I think there is some difference between how I feel for my not!girlfriend* and how I feel for most of my friends but trying to put my finger on it really does my head in and it *still* doesn't match up with how people describe romantic love.
ETA: the very fact that I have a not!girlfriend probably goes to show I'm not entirely aromantic but trying to figure that one out ALSO does my head in, and it's been done in enough already. Sometimes I am jealous of straight people, you know, or anyone who has an orientation that isn't HEAD ASPLODE NAO.
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...but then, part of the reason romance confuses me is that I really *don't* see the difference between that and a close non-sexual romance, other than cultural stuff. But it must be there. And the fact that a lot of asexuals, like you, seem to have some sort of gender-preference programming regarding romance, too, seems to back up that it exists.
Hooray for not!boyfriends and not!girlfriends! I have generally had not!boyfriends most of my adolescence/adulthood, but they usually fall into the category of "I would gladly partner with them if not that I know they want a romantic relationship", so possibly the not! means something different there.
(Also, I think me not being sex-repulsed is part of it? I go "ew, icky" at the idea of romance but I'm okay with sex, so I can imagine being happy in a partnership-with-sex as long as it's not romantic; a lot of romantic asexuals seem to think of their ideal relationship as "just like what sexuals have, only without sex" and since I am okay with the possibility of sex, that doesn't work for me? I dunno, I think my communicating is what's failing here.)
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I love
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"Common" is just meant to mean "anything the average person can see/experience/try without needing lots of special training or tons of expendable cash." Really, I probably will never object to anything posted there as "not common enough!". (I posted something that happened on the ISS after all.)
If, maybe, we start getting flooded with huge numbers of, like, news-article links about discoveries made in giant labs or deep-sea submarines or whatever that probably belong in somewhere like
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"Common" is just meant to mean "anything the average person can see/experience/try without needing lots of special training or tons of expendable cash."
Ah, well! I shall start posting photos from my birding hikes, then! I mean, everything ends up being "average person in my geographical location", but it's not stuff that I'm spending lots of money on. Uh. Of course, I need to get my act together to even SORT those photos...I have thousands of photos since the beginning of summer that I have not yet gone through.
And now the word 'common' has no meaning to me at all. drat.
*g*
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And I'll join in with the aromantic ace pride-declaring and hugs ^_^
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The of the best things about anon fic is that every once in awhile somebody I know and respect says they like one of my anon stories, and I have this validating moment of "OMG they must actually like my stuff and not just be hanging around out of defriending drama!" It's awesome.
I don't think I'm going to stay anon on that one very long, though. I already post the Temeraire crossover to my AO3 account, and I am really very proud of the coming out story. (Especially with all the comments I've gotten about how it sounds like it's really them. I WISH.) I kind of want it to be story fifty on my AO3 account, since I'm at 49 now, plus all the mistypes in the anon version are bugging me.
You want to volunteer to beta before it goes up unanon? :D
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I...would be willing to beta, I think, but, er, I don't have much experience with doing so. What exactly would you like me to do?
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You could if you wanted to also point out places where the phrasing was clunky or I slipped out of voice or my formatting was off or my sentence structure was crappy; I'm not going to make any big changes but I am thinking about messing with it a bit. (And I'm not much for strict grammarian stuff; I'm more interested in if something just reads weirdly to you.)
Tell you what, if you give me someplace I can send a file, I will send you what I currently have as an .rtf file, with an e-mail in which I babble about the things that annoy me when I read it. When I've done betas before (which I am not exactly an expert either), we just do the beta by writing editor's notes in the text in a different color wherever there's something that might need a change.
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it took me a long time to find an identity I felt like I could claim.
I hear you on that. I spent a long time going "this label doesn't fit... and neither does this one... or this one, argh" and resisting social pressure to just squish into a box, already. I finally settled on queer (and genderqueer), but outside of queer-theory-savvy subcultures, that still takes explaining. Here's to a day when I can say I'm queer and you can say you're ace and then we can stop taking questions, dammit and not be treated like zoo animals to poke at. (Not that discussing the theory of sexuality can't be fun, but it sucks when you feel like you're on trial and have to defend your identity.)
Did I have a point? Right, not-fitting-in-boxes solidarity. *fist bump*
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Sometimes I daydream about what it would have been like to grow up in a time where I wasn't expected to decide whether I was het or gay by the time I hit twenty. I suspect I would have taken a lot longer to realize just how unusual I was. I'm not sure if that would have been better or worse.
However, the day when we can stop taking questions is pretty much all good. I want Betan earrings more every day, dammit!
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Coming out as asexual was like being relived of a big burden for me. Suddenly things actually made sense. I wasn't broken. So while there may be some closed doors I feel a lot better mentally and I don't begrudge them. Perhaps I should, but I don't. Lately I've been thinking about the whole romantic orientation and about how when I get down to it all of my relationships have failed because I don't understand why people-I'm-dating are supposed to be different from people-I'm-friends-with, emotionally. I don't understand the basic differences there and so I've been contemplating the fact that I'm probably aromantic.
Coming out never ends. Does it? I mean not in the sense that you have to keep doing it, but it feels like I'm always figuring out new things. IDEK.
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I'm where you are with romance. I don't get why a romance is somehow qualitatively different than a close friendship or a close family relationship, if you take the sex factor out. (And some non-romantic friendships involve sex, anyway, so even with the sex factor I don't get it.) Sometimes I wonder how many people who think they're romantic asexuals are really aromantic asexuals who'd like a life partner. But then, sometimes I think that romance in general is just a cultural delusion and there's nothing in it. So it's probably just that I'm aromantic and I can't understand.
I actually think I might partner better with an aromantic sexual than a romantic asexual, since I get that sex can be fun, I just don't see why the big deal about relationships and who you do it with.
Which is part of my ongoing coming out, too. I've been starting to think that, while I am definitely asexual in the don't-experience-attraction sense, the aromantic part is actually more important to my personal identity. I don't know what to *do* with that yet, but it's there.
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I'd already suspected, so I just did a fistbump her.
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I just wanted to say thank you for writing about coming out. It's something I'm only comtemplating in the very abstract yet. What you said about doors closing really touched me; I feel exactly like saying it makes it official in a whole other way than typing it in a safe online space. I'm still struggling a lot with what it means in terms of the future and potential partners.
I'm also slightly amused at how we've both seemingly worked up to the moment of announcement through a flurry of interest on asexual_fandom. It's interesting how things work out, and I'm really happy that more and more people are feeling comfortable identifying publically.
ETA: Lots of great discussion in comments. Mind if I link in my Perspective post on asexual_fandom?
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It's really neat that we seem to have developed this little corner of fandom where asexual isn't (too) weird! I'm afraid it spoils me.
And sure, you can link if you think it's that useful. *blushes*
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niquerio who still uses LJ...
(Anonymous) 2011-07-16 04:44 pm (UTC)(link)Assuming your definition of romance is the "all I can think about his $love_interest. Sweaty palms. I can't think straight" type... it wears off for most people. And I never really liked that stage much anyway. Body's saying "I'm going to be with this person FOREVER. OMG HOW COULD OTHER PEOPLE EXIST?!" and brain is saying "Dude, you barely know this person yet. All these feelings cannot be trusted." It is annoying.
The later stage of sharing thoughts and adventures and experiences and sex.... way better. And really the relationship isn't much different than other close relationships (ex: family and friends), there's just also sex.
You probably already know all this stuff, but it wasn't mentioned so...