March Monthly Post

[ysabetwordsmith]

What are your planned crowdfunding projects for March? What did you accomplish during February?

The March Creative Jam will be Saturday 16-Sunday 17. The theme will be "Heroism."

Comments

Re: March plans

[ysabetwordsmith]

Thank you! :D

I saw a discussion of aroace erasure and it really made me think of your writing. It's not just that you write characters who are aromantic, asexual, or both. It's that you write relationships with those features, which are shared among characters of all orientations.

There's no sex or romance between Bennett and Joshua, but they share a deep male friendship and have raised their children closely together as backup parents.

Jules, Mariset, Drew, Glyn, and Jaliya had different types of tight connections among them even though only Jules/Mariset were a couple.

I do much the same with mine.

Ambrose and Gary are a queerplatonic couple. They're very devoted, but it's very much a spiritual relationship rather than romantic or sexual. Ambrose actually turned his sexuality off because he found it distracting and unrewarding.

Heron and Mallory are queerplatonic coparents. Heron has been ace all along, and doesn't seem to be romantic, but he's tractive as all hell. Mallory started out sexual but the gang rape completely killed her interest in crotch romping. It was never romantic for her -- she just screwed around whenever she felt like it, and now she doesn't. It's okay that Mallory doesn't feel sex would be worth the work of reclaiming it. But she very much appreciates Heron's attentiveness, even if it sometimes makes her feel confused or uncomfortable because it's so different than her past. She'll take the better opportunity and learn to get used to it.

Paladins in general tend to be aroace because their passion is for their deity, and that fills their life in the way that a family does for most people. So Shahana and Ari, Johan and Althey, have a mentor/novice relationship and some day the younger ones will grow up and take novices of their own. Their deity and their fellow paladins are their family. And I've only seen one person make a casual pass at any of them; most folks just seem to view them as guides rather than potential partners. That widespread social acceptance matters -- it's one of the few functional things in a very broken world.

I'm really glad that we have things like Feathering the Nest to promote nonsexual activities and relationships. A crotch just isn't the most stable thing to build a life on!

Re: March plans

[dialecticdreamer]

The other thing that I try to do is show that even the romantic/sexual people treat aro/ace (and every other orientation) as... Not merely "normal," but... accepted as perfectly valid without having to announce it as such. Mainstream, and thus just as taken for granted as anything else.

Re: March plans

[ysabetwordsmith]

I like that too.


In a healthy society, these conversations would be coequal:

Robin: "You're fun. How about a date Saturday night?"

Pat: "Thanks for the offer, but no, I'm in a committed relationship."

Robin: "Oops! I'm so sorry, I didn't realize. We could get together with some friends instead?"

Pat: "That sounds great."


Sam: "You're fun. How about a date Saturday night?"

Riley: "Thanks for the offer, but no, I'm aroace."

Robin: "Oops! I'm so sorry, I didn't realize. We could get together with some friends instead?"

Pat: "That sounds great."


I've made a habit of writing in as much diversity as possible. Some of it's automatic -- often when a new trait is hyped up, I check my work and find that I've been writing it for decades, as with the recent "discovery" of acespec orientations. But I do it deliberately too.

One thing I've noticed is that characters vary tremendously in how they feel about it or show it. Some are very out. Some are very closeted. Some don't even know what they are until another character points it out. Others just don't think it's any more important than their hair color -- a part of them, but not something they base their life around.

So I note orientation in the character sheet when I know it, but most of them never say what they are. It's just there in how they relate to other people, or don't. For instance, Rizal is amorplatonic -- capable of romantic relationships but preferring queerplatonic. He has a very close, intimate, nonsexual partnership with Skink. You can actually see the abandonment anxiety after their first big disagreement over Skink faceplanting due to overstrain. It serves the same role in relationship evolution as a fight between romantic partners, only about something other than romance. Equal plot tension and personal growth, different source.

I have no idea why some people have trouble coming up with other options. Their imaginations must be so small.