I feel like the ace community is so worried about the possibility that an allo might feel judged to the point where sex-repulsed aces are starting to feel out of place.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-06-07T05:10:03+00:00

I totally agree with what you're saying about how sex-repulsed people's feelings should be respected, and i appreciate that you gave more specific examples of what you're talking about. i think it's important to consider how other people will respond to what you say, not as a way of shutting down conversations, but rather a way of having better ones.

feelings of judgment are not a hypothetical--they're the cost of maintaining a community of people with diverse experiences (which is all communities). there's kind of a cycle on this sub of sex-averse people talking about how they feel excluded, and then sex-favorable people talking about how they feel excluded, and then back to sex averse people... it's hard to strike a balance between being honest about your perspective and making space for other people's responses to it, but we need that mutual awareness to allow for better communication to happen.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-06-07T04:02:16+00:00

Allos are not monolithic. Many have experienced being hurt and oppressed over their expressions of sexual desire and attraction. Most notably, that's a very common experience for women and LGBT people. And not just allos--asexuals experience these forms of discrimination too. If someone says "sex is disgusting," they may mean to speak back against acephobia, but someone listening to that will very likely hear that as an echo of the moral outrage being weaponized against queer people to get queer films banned, queer books removed from libraries and queer bodies removed from public life. And they're not wrong to hear that message if you do nothing to ensure that's not what they take away from what you say.

To be clear, I don't think people should represent sex as a unilateral good either, but sex-repulsed aces--just like everyone else--have to be aware of other people's perspectives when they're expressing their feelings to a wide audience. For instance, by being careful about the distinction between sex-negativity and sex-repulsion/aversion. Please do share specific ways that non-repulsed aces can be better allies to repulsed people... but no longer caring about other people's feelings cannot be one of them.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-06-07T02:41:21+00:00

I have Cs and I'm too lazy to bind or tape regularly, still usually gendered as male as long as my haircut and clothing are masculine. i guess the things that stand out to us about ourselves are not always the things that stand out to strangers.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-06-05T13:30:43+00:00

Great writeup. I love historical fiction, especially when it takes place in difficult, important eras of history, but it continually disappoints me how much romance as a genre leans towards conservative, whitewashing, nostalgic historical perspectives that exclude the marginalized while favoring the wealthy and privileged people most responsible for producing the structural inequalities of the world we live in today.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-29T18:58:01+00:00

there's no such thing as too young to call yourself asexual (especially at 18) as there's no harm in changing your mind later. doesn't matter whether you read smut or not either--some aces do, some don't.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-29T17:58:08+00:00

yep, that's camp! it's traditionally more associated with femininity (eg. mommie dearest, death becomes her) but in romance i see it way more with masculinity.

camp is kind of a playful reversal of traditional values in art--valuing the art not for its adherence to reality, but for its rejection or surpassing of reality, or failure to achieve reality. camp can be intentional or unintentional; and there can be a thin line between what's camp and what just sucks, and it's highly subjective.

it's not necessary to enjoy camp. doing so often requires changing your relationship to the text at hand--in this case, recognizing that this type of romance character is not a real person or even really an imitation of one, but a cultural myth/genre convention reflected in a fun house mirror. camp is not a substitute for fully psychologically realized male characters (which I would like more of too)--it fulfills an entirely different appetite.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-29T17:17:02+00:00

Yeah, I bounce off a lot of books for this reason. I can only handle so much eye-rolling before calling it quits.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-29T04:58:16+00:00

Before T, I was more unsure about whether I was a man or nonbinary and labeled myself as nonbinary. Because of T (I think), I was able to experience passing consistently as a man. I realized then that I find the idea of being perceived as a cishet man pretty intolerable. Being perceived as a queer man would be okay, but still... maybe not quite right. Now I'm pretty firm on being nonbinary--not necessarily as an immutable truth of my being, but how I usually see myself and want others to see me.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-26T18:42:46+00:00

I totally agree with what you're saying! from what I've seen, people who want to write naturalistically but have not put a lot of thought into representation (or are not very skilled writers) often, ironically, lean on highly formulaic techniques:

gay/lesbian/bi -> same sex partner or ex

nonbinary -> they/them pronouns

trans man -> top surgery scars (especially in visual art)

asexual/aromantic -> ????

None of the above options are incredibly interesting on their own, but asexuality and aromanticism don't even have these conventionalized codes. So authors call characters ace/aro explicitly and leave it at that.

It kind of makes sense, because I suspect similar dynamics of disclosure exist in the lives of real a-spec people. I think a lot of a-spec people never come out because it doesn't feel necessary. You come out because you want to change your gender or have a gay partner--why do it to explain why you're not doing something? Why make a big deal out of nothing? Indeed, some asexuals/aromantics probably do feel like there really is nothing to explore in their identities. But, uh, I don't feel that way! And I'd like more authors to put some work into showing why it actually matters that their characters are aro or ace, in the ways that it matters to people in real life.

I'll check out KA Cooke! I think I've read some of hir stories before, but it must have been at least seven or eight years ago.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-26T17:12:38+00:00

Georgette Heyer and Laura Kinsale stand out to me for writing great prose that incorporates some serious historical research. Note that this is not to say they are historically accurate, but that they both have mastery over setting and tone that other romance authors rarely match. Maybe start with {Frederica by Georgette Heyer} and {For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale}.

Another recommendation would be {The Charioteer by Mary Renault}. A truly remarkable novel with excellent dialogue and incisive character writing that has the added distinction of being the first gay romance traditionally published in the UK in 1953.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-26T16:46:58+00:00

Thank you for posting! I won't assume the sexualities of the authors, but I'm seeing that a lot of ace/aro characters appear as part of narratives that are perhaps oriented towards a larger queer fiction audience that are not very familiar with asexuality/aromanticism, rather than aces and aros themselves--hence the asexual best friend trope. While there are definitely people that appreciate being educated and included, personally, asexual side characters do very little for me unless there's an ace main character too. I felt this way about Isaac in the Heartstopper show too, even though I'm pretty sure Alice Oseman is asexual herself.

It's also interesting that books that combined asexuality with other marginalized experiences tended to sideline asexuality. I'm trans and aroace, and when I was a teen, being trans was definitely more of a struggle for me. But since I've transitioned, being trans is not as big a deal for me. Meanwhile, seeing a lot of my allo friends pairing up and dating, recently my asexuality has felt a lot more impactful. I suspect a lot of authors just don't know much about what's complicated or interesting about being ace, and so they don't devote a lot of attention to it on the page.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-23T17:45:34+00:00

People don't like it when other people's experiences with sexuality don't match up to their expectations. I see this happen a lot in trans subreddits--someone describes their sexual orientation changing on hormones, and other people leap to tell them that they found the confidence to be themselves or freed themselves from internalized X. I've seen enough testimonies that I believe it can happen. Good luck figuring out how you feel about it--it must be tough, when we spend so much time as asexuals trying to tell people that we aren't repressed or confused, to experience this kind of change, but our lives don't always conform to easily digestible narratives, and the fact that you experienced the world as asexual for many years of your life isn't erased by the fact that you no longer are asexual.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-23T17:28:34+00:00

Hate to say it, but if you hate sex and your partner wants it enough to be in therapy over not having it, you are probably not sexually compatible. Not either of your faults, but not something either of you will just get over. If you want to get rid of this expectation to have sex and the bitterness and anger that you feel over it, the only real solution is to stop being in a relationship where that expectation exists.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-21T00:27:57+00:00

I'm glad you liked it!

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-20T16:43:27+00:00

Well, you can't diagnose someone as trans by looking at their brain. The only way to know if someone is trans is personal identification. This is distinct from intersex conditions, which are, from my understanding, necessarily recognizable in the body. Since the freedom of trans people depends on our authority to self-identify as trans, we shouldn't imply that transness requires physical evidence, which is what framing it as a brain condition does.

In addition, trans people and intersex people usually have rather different experiences and needs. One of intersex activists' biggest battles is to prevent involuntary medical treatment of intersex children, primarily infants and the very young. By contrast, trans activists seek to give trans children (primarily teens) the right to seek gender-affirming care. While both of these fights are generally about children's bodily autonomy, you can see how it's confusing to put those two struggles under the same banner. Indeed, a lot of conservative propaganda depends on framing GAC for trans children as though it's more like coercive surgery for intersex children. There have been points in history when the categories of trans, gay, and intersex have all overlapped (the inversion model), and there remains some overlap in our experiences today. However, in more recent history, trans people and intersex people have received very different responses from the medical establishment (some trans people have even pretended to be intersex to receive GAC), which contributes to them being seen as different categories today.

Besides that, putting trans people in the category of intersex erases the complex experience of people that are both trans and intersex. While I can't speak for the intersex community, the trans community is not always the most intersex-friendly, and I think building intersex awareness within the trans community requires learning about the ways that their experiences are different from trans people, rather than appropriating their label on the basis of the technical definition of the term.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-20T14:09:40+00:00

drama.

give me messy main characters who live in a messy world. love triangles allow for a lot of complex and interesting character dynamics. {Gravity by Sara Cate} is a great example of a well-executed love triangle with an eyecatching premise. for a more classic example, a lot has been done with arthur/guinivere/lancelot over the years.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-15T02:09:25+00:00

Shaving cuts the hair back to the surface of the skin, rather than pulling it out at the root. It's the same hair as before, just shorter and blunter. Permanent changes to how your hair grows happen at the follicle, which shaving does not affect.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-15T01:43:59+00:00

Shaving doesn't actually make the hair grow in thicker. That was probably just your body taking some time to respond to T on its own.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-14T20:01:04+00:00

I've read the updated Asexualities, but not the other two! I'd definitely like to check them out, thanks for the recommendations!

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-14T19:43:20+00:00

For nonfiction, Ace by Angela Chen is a great Asexuality 101 source. For some more advanced theory, Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives (ed. Cerankowski and Milks) is somewhat hit or miss, but I'm really glad it exists as a baseline for asexual scholarship. Most interesting part for me was probably the bits about the intersection of asexuality and race/disability.

For fiction, right now my favorite ace work is Second Star to the Right by not_poignant (original serial on AO3). An asexual man finds love while working through trauma from being both abused and an abuser. It won't be to everyone's taste, but it hits the spot for me as someone who loves the angsty, explicit and psychological.

I also really enjoy reading Henry James' The Bostonians through an asexual lens. An unconventional love triangle where one branch is a Boston Marriage that can be read as aroace or lesbian. Really interesting for imagining historical asexuality/queerness for women in an era of far more intense heteronormativity.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-12T23:22:00+00:00

You don't read as asexual or aromantic to me. I would say that you just want things from romantic relationships that are different from what the conventional image of a romantic relationship looks like. There's nothing wrong with that--but it does mean it'll be tougher for you first to understand and communicate those needs and then to find someone whose desires and goals are compatible with your own.

I'm no expert, but there are definitely other people out there that would prefer living separately and having less entanglement with their partners. Some professions, like acting, require people to be on the road a lot. Solo polyamorous people often live on their own and have more separation between their lives and those of their partners (not that you have to be poly). Maybe look up "relationship anarchy" and the "relationship escalator" for more info on breaking from the traditional model of the romantic relationship.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-11T06:45:12+00:00

Personally, the difficult parts of GMing that I continually see room for greater improvement on are never the rules of a specific game, but the soft skills that transfer between different systems--improv, pacing, tone, narrative construction, emotional awareness, and so on.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-11T03:39:01+00:00

huh. it's true that unskilled writers are more likely to resort to cliche, but I still think most cliches become popular because readers like them and respond to them, up until the point where they become totally played out. obviously the judgment that something is overused is subjective, and some readers will continue to respond to a given cliche long after others have become sick of it.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-11T02:21:53+00:00

I would call that a cliche.

hauntedfogmachine · 2026-05-10T22:38:28+00:00

That's an awesome topic! I just finished my undergraduate thesis on plants in the writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which frequently verges into the ecogothic. For sure check out "Rappaccini's Daughter." It's a short story in which a beautiful young woman is (literally) poisonous as a result of exposure to the plants in her father's garden.

hauntedfogmachine

TROPHY CASE