#this post is aces

[allofthefeelings]

I really hope that all posts about Good Omens that say things like “Even if, as angels, they don’t experience gender or romantic/sexual attraction like we do, they’re CLEARLY experiencing something that is similar and parallel to queer/gay attraction and it makes sense to read them through that lens” is influencing the way that people consider whether asexuality is inherently queer.

[allofthefeelings]

Lately I've been rolling around in fics where characters love each other and sometimes have sex about it but not necessarily but more importantly the details of what's a friendship versus what's a romance versus what's due to physical attraction are really fuzzy. I've been questioning my own identity as aro/ace-spec (again) for like two years now so I want id fic that tells me romance and relationships don't have to be so cut and dried

Ohhhh anon I hear you. Figuring out the complicated shit in my head by projecting it onto fictional characters is so much better than struggling with it without that- it’s the catharsis someone else mentioned earlier. I’m so glad that that’s working for you!

(I was using fic to look at relationship models that made more sense to me WAY earlier than I even knew the ace/aro spectrum existed or even that the relationships I was looking for might qualify, so you’re way ahead of me. Good job, anon!)

[allofthefeelings]

I can’t stop thinking of Natasha knowing Yelena’s aro/ace and Yelena knowing Nat is queer and poly and each of them trying to get the other to admit it without actually admitting to anything about their own lives

[allofthefeelings]

achromic-red-dreams-doze-angrily replied to your post “.”

it’s about. the WINDOW SHOPPING are these shoes hella rad? absolutely. i will espouse the glory of these shoes for all time. am i going to enter the store to check them out? fuck no

YES EXACTLY. YOU GET IT.

Thinking about the shoes makes me extremely happy and if I were a person into shoes I would be VERY INTO these shoes. But as I prefer to go barefoot, I do not need to enter the shop.

[allofthefeelings]

Oh, it’s apparently asexual awareness week (?), so you should all be aware I have at least one ace and/or aro headcanon for basically every character that exists, not to get them out of the way of other characters, but because it’s an interesting way to interrogate how I think each character views love and sex.

[allofthefeelings]

In that case!!! I’d love to hear ace Tony Stark headcanons because I see it talked about once in a lifetime and it’s always so interesting to me!!!!

Here is my ace Tony headcanon, influenced by a few fics I really like and several fics I don’t like that helped cement my opinions:

Tony has a high libido, and he likes the physical sensations of orgasm and the closeness of sex. I think that minimizing any of that is ridiculous; it’s canon. Tony adores physical affection in every form. None of that is the same as experiencing sexual attraction.

So I think an ace Tony would have conflated aesthetic attraction with sexual attraction for himself- he likes beautiful things and beautiful people!- and would not even realize there’s a difference.

Nine scenarios out of ten, this Tony would never realize he even could remotely qualify as asexual- he’d laugh it off, have you met him?- and he loves Pepper and he’s happy with his life and I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all.

Then there’s that other one out of ten times. I don’t know what would prompt it; likely just the kind of casual conversation where you suddenly realize your POV and everyone else’s are DRASTICALLY different and you had no idea. Tony likes solving problems and would want to get to the bottom of this.

Tony never, like, signs up for AVEN or partakes in The Discourse. Nothing really changes. He’s still a bi (or pan? I’ll let someone else negotiate that one out) dude, happy in his long-term relationship with Pepper which may or may not include bringing in other people (depending on which scenario this is happening in) and has sex and likes it.

But Tony is a mechanic who likes knowing how things work. This is another piece of the puzzle that lets him know himself a little better. I think there would be a deep level of satisfaction in that.

And now he’s better prepared for the next time Clint says something during a debrief that makes absolutely no sense to his worldview.

[allofthefeelings]

Can you please please please talk about ace!Natasha?

I have a whole tag on aroace Natasha if you want something to browse!

That said, let’s come up with something new.

[CW: references to underage exploitation/objectification consistent with hints of Red Room canon we’ve gotten, nothing explicit]

Natasha was used to being objectified. Not just as a sex object (though of course that was part of it); the Red Room trained her as a thing to be admired rather than as a person to be noticed.

She liked it well enough at the time; it felt like success, and besides, she didn’t know who else she could be. That was how all of them felt, she knew (and knows even better now); like the role chafed in ways they couldn’t quite articulate, but it was part of the job and being good was vital to survival.

But the parts that fit wrong for her weren’t exactly the same parts that fit wrong for the other women (no, girls- they were girls, and they couldn’t have given consent if they wanted to). They talked sometimes, about a particularly handsome trainer or how good a kisser a mark was, and she thought they had simply forgotten how to take off the mask of their job. Now, she knows they were whistling in the dark, finding the only good parts of what they’d gone through- but at the time, she hadn’t understood those could be good parts for anyone.

SHIELD gives her the opportunity for connection, and they don’t approach her with the mask she’s used to; they look at her like she’s more than a doll to dress up or a book of strategy. They treat her like a person, and it settles her in her skin better than all the admiration she’d gotten before.

Now that she has a chance to be a person, she thinks about putting the mask back on, to actually BE normal like she trained so hard to pretend to be. It would enable her to make those connections she’d only imitated in the past. But it seems like so much work to pretend. Later. She’ll do it later.

And if later never comes, well, she’s kind of okay with that.