meridian_rose

It's annual asexual awareness week. I've written a lot in previous years about the awareness weeks, about my asexual identity, and I write and continue to write fiction exploring and/or including asexuality.
You can find all those posts under the theme: asexuality spectrum tag, the non sexual intimacy and the sexuality tag

This post is going to talk about asexuality and fiction, along with some deeply personal stories, and a fair bit of talk about the anti/fandom policing currently doing the rounds. Because these things are interlinked, where

1) what you ship, read or write/draw now determines if you're a good person or a filthy p*do/n*zi and harassing people over fiction has become activism
2) exclusionism in the queer community leads to attacking people over their own sexual orientation/labels and makes for tight-knit circles where you have to conform to their beliefs, with a similar insulating effect in fandom anti-shipping circles
3) Your sexual orientation, sex, and gender, are often considered to be indicators of what you are allowed to like in fiction (you can't be a lesbian and ship a m/f ship, you can't write m/m ships unless you're a gay man, women reading m/m fic are "gross Fujoshis", etc)

There's also been a huge rise in ageism and it's mostly misogynistic (fandom mom used as an insult, calling people hags, telling women they should be doing their taxes and looking after their children instead of being in fandom spaces) but that's a slightly separate, if related issue from the sexual orientation one.

This year, despite the discourse/drama/wank over Neil Gaiman refusing to call Aziraphale and Crowley "gay men in a sexual relationship" and daring to acknowledge nonbinary people and asexuality exist, there's been a lovely amount of Good Omens fic and art that is non sexual in nature, some romantic, some queerplatonic. People have been good at tagging their work so it's easy to find/exclude things you don't want to read.
I've been writing h/c fic, I even wrote fluff (very rare for me), and I explored the idea of non-binary Crowley which was something new for me. I've been enjoying looking at exploring intimacy with care and respect for boundaries, and showing deep devotion that isn't rooted in sex.

However there's also been a lot of ace hate and exclusion on Tumblr and Twitter as a whole leading me to block many accounts. I wrote a bit about exclusionism in the queer community for one of this month's writingwednesday posts. I have to say, aside from one upsetting exchange with a family member and one online straight female who was proud of saying "zucchini*! Because asexuals are emotional vegetables!", most of the ace hate and marginalisation I have seen and experienced has come from other queer people.

*zucchini is a term sometimes used within queer platonic relationships, especially for an aroace person to describe their partner "They're my zucchini."
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I honestly expected things to get better over the years. And while in some respects they have, the pushback against asexuality and bisexuality has been unexpected and unwelcome, along with the return of "gay ships are bad because I say so" and the rise of "the shipper of anything I don't like is evil and probably a pedophile".

Half Magic is very much a women's movie. Written and directed by and starring Heather Graham, it focuses on three women's attempts to improve their lives and relationships with a little help from each other and some magical candles.



I rarely watch romances and this was in the romance section of Sky Movies but I'd seen wonderful gifs featuring Luke Arnold (Black Sails) and I knew it starred Stepanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) so I gave it a shot.


Gif from: http://significanceofmoths.tumblr.com/post/171215086687

Sexism, Friendship, Sensuality, Sexuality and Self-Acceptance

Honey (Graham) is working as a development assistant with her asshole boyfriend (Chris D'Elia) who uses her for his sexual gratification over making sure she's enjoying it and puts her and her ideas down at every opportunity. She wants to make his movies less sexist, wants to write and direct her own screenplays. Supported by fellow office worker and a female sponsor, Honey keeps pitching to make the scripts featuring her boyfriend feature more women with sexual agency.
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Labels (712 words) by meridian_rose
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Black Sails
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Billy Bones & Max
Characters: Max (Black Sails), Billy Bones
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Billy Bones, Jack is mentioned, Silver is mentioned, Anne is mentioned, Gay Bar, discussion of sexuality, Biphobic OC, oc self-labels as gold star lesbian
Series: Part 4 of The Odd Trio

Summary: At a bar, Max meets a woman with some narrow views on sexual orientations, leading her to discuss matters with Billy (however Anne takes a more direct approach to bisexual erasure)

The relationship study sounds like a perfect way to some easy money for Zo, if he can find someone to fake monogamy with him for the duration. Zo's stunned when Riario offers to be his partner since his father cut off his funds.

While things are initially awkward Zo discovers Riario isn't as stuck-up as he thought and Riario finds the study prompts him to reconsider his sexuality and his ambitions.

Somehow the uneasy acquaintances become genuine friends…and maybe more…it's supposed to a temporary deceit but the more time they spend together the more they discover how compatible they are.

For the trope_bingo prompt au: high school/college

Are You Gonna Be My Guy
Rating:Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning:No Archive Warnings Apply
Category:M/M
Fandom:Da Vinci's Demons
Relationships:Girolamo Riario/Zoroaster (Da Vinci's Demons) Leonardo da Vinci & Girolamo Riario
Characters:Girolamo Riario Zoroaster (Da Vinci's Demons) Leonardo da Vinci Vanessa Moschella Niccolò Machiavelli Clarice Orsini Giuliano de' Medici Lorenzo "Il Magnifico" de' Medici Pope Sixtus IV | Alessandro della Rovere
Additional Tags:Alternate Universe - Modern Setting Alternate Universe - College/University background Vanessa x Giuliano Lorenzo is awful Lorenzo uses a gay slur and participates in asexual erasure Fake/Pretend Relationship Photography Alessandro is awful and uses a gay slur Hurt/Comfort Relationship Discussions Discussions of sexuality Questioning background Clarice x Lorenzo that ends badly Community: trope_bingo Trope Bingo Round 8
Language:English
Words:17436 Chapters:4/4

Meta exploring Riario's sexual and romantic orientation. I head-canon him as somewhere on the asexual spectrum. Not necessarily completely asexual but possibly grey-asexual or demi-sexual, maybe with some sexual attraction to all genders; I also think he could be biromantic and/or demiromantic and the meta looks at various facets of his identity. For Asexual Awareness Week 2016.
Originally posted at my wordpress account and professional tumblr. Cross-posted to AO3.

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I head-canon Da Vinci's Demons' Giralomo Riario as somewhere on the asexual spectrum. Not necessarily completely asexual but possibly grey-asexual or demi-sexual, maybe with some sexual attraction to all genders; I also think he could be biromantic and/or demiromantic.
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One of the things I love about fandom is discussion. Finding other people who understand your need to rant or analyse or otherwise engage with the canon. Canon which is interesting enough to draw you in, but, in many cases, can be frustrating to deal with given some of the questionable writing choices of later seasons.
( musings on being a disillusioned fan who is also an amateur writer )

Rarely does a week go by without my seeing an article that talks about sex, and how someone is not happy they are not getting enough of it. Regardless of the tone of the article however, there is the horror of the comment section.

There'll be some sensible comments.

There'll also be hordes of apparently sex-mad commentators who are keen to insist that there is no pleasure compared to that of using someone else's body to gratify your needs. That someone who isn't being fucked isn't worthy of existing, let alone being in a relationship.

If someone isn't having sex with you? Dump them. You've been together five years? Still dump them. You really love them and you've got a child together? Dump them anyway.

This week it's this article, in the Guardian
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This article was originally posted to my WordPress account: https://lmdee.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/asexual-erasure-insults/

I'll add here that while I am more angry than sad, it's not the best start to a Monday to be told your sole purpose in life is to be someone's fucktoy.

I'm currently working on a polyamory fic, which may never be finished. A is having sex with B sometimes. B has just started having sex with C. A has feelings for C, but C can't reciprocate sexually but comes to the conclusion they are bi-romantic and can reciprocate romantically. OT3-ever-after.

And while it's still important to me that this happens, that the conversation that sex is not the sole, not the "ultimate" expression of affection, in many ways I'm preaching to the choir. The people reading fanfic, in particular slash fic and polyamory, and original queer fiction are already more likely onboard with this idea. Not everyone, but a larger percentage of the audience than that of a general newspaper. The people who most need to learn that gender and sex and sexuality are not nearly so black and white as they'd like to think will avoid anything that threatens their comfortable worldview.

Title: Whole and Complete Unto Thyself
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Mature for language and themes. Gen. Original Characters.
Word Count: 1499
Prompt: For mmom and allbingo wild card - asexuality
Summary: There's nothing like being told the only sex you'll ever have is wrong to knock your self-esteem. If you're lucky, you have a friend to vent to. Discussion of sexual orientations and asexuality in particular. Please see the endnotes.

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I've let myself get behind, and there's over two months worth of links here, so it's longer than usual. But given how some of my Tumblr posts have zero notes (remind me how tagging your posts is guaranteed to get a Tumblr audience unlike the "dead" LJ?) I'm keen to showcase them here too, and I always like to share links to articles I've read that have stood out for me.

This Show Reblogged gifs from "The Flash", featuring the father-son type relationship between Barry Allen and Joe West to which I added some commentary about how I love all the characters and this relationship.

Lewis: The Moonbeams Brief review/commentary added to a reblog about an episode of "Lewis" featuring Tom Riley as an artist who appears to be on the autistic spectrum.

Overnight Everything I Loved Was Gone I posted a link to a longer excerpt which was originally posted here and added some commentary of my own about the Internet and public shaming.

Why Historical Inaccuracies in Wolf Hall Don't Matter I posted an excerpt from a longer newspaper article. Wolf Hall is a drama, not a documentary, so artistic licence is allowed. And how accurate can we be about the Tudors anyway…in matters of characterisation, what can accuracy mean? We will never know the exact balance of sexual desire, dynastic ambition and theological disputation that led Henry VIII to marry and divorce in the way that he did. Finally an article saying what I seem to say every damn month. I added brief commentary when I posted the link.

Artisitic License in Vikings, Black Sails, and Da Vinci's Demons A reblog of another article that gets it; Da Vinci’s maxim that “the best story wins” thus applies to historical fiction as a whole. The genre often comes under criticism for historical departures, but as we well know, “history” is a constructed narrative, and what we term “accurate” can often be subjective. Such artistic license not only makes historical fiction more narratively cohesive and dramatically entertaining, but is instructive in ways that history is not, as the artists behind these shows use the conscious inaccuracies to underscore the perspectives and motives of the people of that era, helping us deepen our understand of that era, something history alone cannot do."
I addded my own commentary and graphic.

I'm a 20's Something Erotic Writer Who's Never Had Sex I posted a link to the article with commentary because as an asexual I was hoping to find this inspiring instead of some condescending crap about how with the writer bragging about being "fully functional" despite being a virgin without a husband or kids while being hypocritically nasty about "sad old single romance writers with cats". Her youth will fade and maybe she'll lose her "real" job that she's proud of, and then she'll be the "stereotype" she's so horrified by. Though since this post went utterly unnoticed, maybe everyone agrees with the smug author that it's okay be a virgin but not be an older virgin and/or someone without "real" employment because writing doesn't count. One more author I'll make sure never to read.

Terry Pratchett: An Accidental Pagan Theologian A lovely article I posted a link to that points out "He was one of the very few writers to speculate on how deities come into being, first as particles of energy, then accumulating more energy from the minds of worshippers (in the book Small Gods)" and talks about how "Much of his work explores ideas of social justice."
I added my own commentary: "As a pagan, a lover of stories, and a writer, I agree wholeheartedly. The stories around the power of belief, the power of story, the power of people to affect change, are wonderful concepts. His work has impacted, and continues to impact, my thoughts and beliefs and creativity."

Things I Want in Da Vinci's Demons Season 3 And since I probably won't get the interaction between these two particular characters, despite their shared experiences, I'll just have to write it in fanfic.

Other articles

True Gender Equality Is Actually Perceived As Inequality Reblogged (with some minor commentary in tags) link from a longer article about Fandom and Male Priviledge which is worth a look, examining male privilege generally and the more female nature of fandom and how more recent male involvement risks damaging spaces largely developed by and for women.

In Celebration of Old School Live Journal Timely, given my post about how LJ is not dead is this article where the author waxes nostalgic about LJ and the connections she made through it. Not good enough to keep her invested in using it, and she inadvertently makes a case against Tumblr and it's inability to foster the same kind of personal connections, but it's still an interesting read – and some of the comments on the article are made by current LJ users.

Hapax and Heyer, Austen and Irony, or, What I should have said an interesting article in which the author talks about the difference between the works of Georgette Heyer and those of Jane Austen.

13 Things Fan Fiction Writers Are Very Tired Of Explaining. Yes, we can and usually do write non-fanfic, and actually, writing fic usually isn’t “just a phase” are two of the gems here.

In my mini-meta about sexuality in mainstream vs non-mainstream fiction, I mentioned two articles that I think warrant mention in and of themselves:
The Thing about Reading Fanfic and Original Slash you get used to that particular writing/reading culture after a while. You get used to the frank discussions of sexuality and kink, the close attention to diversity and social justice issues in the text, the unrestrained creativity when it comes to plot. The most amazing, creative, engaging stories I’ve ever read have almost all been fanfiction, and I think part of that is because there’s no limitations placed on the authors.
And
Halt & Catch Pointless Heterosexuality looking particularly at "Supernatural" but addressing issues of representation and queer baiting on the whole: "There are a lot of different rationales fans and viewers put forward in the argument that Dean should not be shown as canonically bisexual, one being that “the show is not about that” or that it would “distract from the story” or that it “serves no purpose.” Alright, well, for the moment let’s just skip over the fact that no one in the history of ever has argued that depictions of heterosexuality ought to be relegated only to shows that are “about” romance/sex. Or that canonical affirmation of a character’s heterosexuality “distracts” from the story. Or that a character’s heterosexuality “serves no purpose” so it should not be present in the narrative at all. Let’s just skip over the queer-phobic nature of demanding that same-sex eroticism constantly justify its own existence in media in a way heterosexuality NEVER EVER EVER is called upon to do. Let’s just by-pass that particular issue, for the moment." The author is rightfully angry about how queer identities are treated.