#like I was pleased to find out daud from dishonored was ace | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xadoheandterra · 1 month

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I absolutely love the amount of fic that exists that just...explores Alastor's sexuality in Hazbin. That explores what being asexual means, or what being aromantic means. It's been an absolute delight to find fic that outright embraces a character and the nuances that could come from it.

It has also actually educated me a lot about the asexuality spectrum, seeing so many authors outright identify themselves and say how they are exploring their own identity through fic.

I don't say this much, because it has taken me years to reach the level of understanding of where I am, but discovering who you are as a person, your likes, dislikes, and desires is a constant journey. You don't reach a conclusion and just...stop. Learning about yourself. Growing as a person.

When I was younger I didn't really understand what sex and romance were. I knew I felt something for my best friend, and at the time I had thought that made me bisexual. I knew I felt something for my first boyfriend, but I couldn't put a name to it. Love is a weird and confusing mess of emotions and impulses and desires that doesn't translate one to one to every person. I knew I loved these people, but I didn't know myself what that meant.

I knew I enjoyed kissing my boyfriend, but the minute he got a hard on I backed the fuck off. I knew I enjoyed going out to eat and watching movies and going on walks with him, but I found those same activities just as enjoyable without the tie of being in a relationship with the person and wasn't it supposed to mean something different if you were dating the person? It confused me.

We mutually broke up because both of us felt the relationship wasn't leading anywhere. For me it was the fact that I didn't understand why, as much as I loved the guy, there wasn't that something different that I was under the impression to expect. So I kept on, moved on, found a new person that was funny and amusing and I liked. When that person suggested sex, I decided to say fuck it and give it a go.

I went on from a boyfriend to a girlfriend to a friend with benefits to being taken to shibari parties to being taken to a BDSM dungeon for a demonstration to having a birthday sex party thrown for me when I was 25.

By this point I had determined two things about myself: I was not cisgender, and I was definitely not straight. I had taken to thinking I was only just coming to terms with being transgender at 25, and I was firmly of the opinion that I was panromantic and pansexual.

I'm not. I thought I was. It was the easiest way for me to parse the feelings and emotions and I thought I found people attractive in the "I would sleep with you and enjoy it" way but, well. I was 25, my friends threw a sex party for me. We had drinks, they were definitely more drunk than me. We had fun.

They had fun. I ended up watching from the sidelines after the first round, and had a...realization.

For all that I had been through to that point--the people I had been with to that point--I didn't exactly enjoy sex. But that's not quite right either because I did I just. Didn't need it? Want it? I'm still not sure how to phrase this. But it wasn't something that was--there wasn't that spark. I had fun, but I would also find myself adrift in the act sometimes. If there was pain? Oh, that would bring me back. I knew firmly by this point I was definitely a bit of a masochist but, even then, it wasn't the same. It was fun but it wasn't pleasurable. I could physically respond but I wasn't fully there.

I thought maybe it's because my body wasn't right. Maybe I would enjoy this more if I had the parts I felt like I needed. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Eight years later with my current partner, sex still isn't necessary. I'm fine with not having sex and just cuddling. I find that if my partner wants sex, I'll be down, but it's not something I tend to initiate. It's something he starts first, usually. I have had in the four years of us being together maybe...five times were I've ever initiated such acts? Five times where I wanted?

He's the first person that's actually been a thing with. It's what sort of struck the hammer, I think, that made me connect that realization from when I was 25 to not being a transgender thing, but an asexual thing.

And then Hazbin happened and there's plenty of wonderful fanfic exploring asexuality and aromanticism and I had the second realization since I started this journey when I was fourteen and found that I very much liked my best friend in a platonic-but-not-platonic way. I realized that for all my experience and dating, for all the romantic things I've been through or done, they're not...they don't spark that thing I've been led to believe happens. Every romantic gesture I can see happen with a best friend or an acquaintance and I would enjoy it in the exact same way. There's no difference between if I love the person as a partner or if I love the person as a friend.

The emotions about the person are different, sure, but the things we do are the same things I would do with a friend. They evoke the same emotions about the events as if it were a friend. I don't enjoy dating I enjoy hanging out with people, whether the emotions for the person are friend shaped or partner shaped.

So I've begun to realize I might be just a little aromantic too. Which would explain a lot of the troubles I had dating. A lot. Like shit emotions are confusing on a good day, ok?

So yeah. I am loving the ability to explore asexuality and aromanticism in fic because fuck me it is helping me come to terms with a lot of shit I thought I understood.

End all be all sexuality and romance is a continuous journey and sometimes it takes you 20+ years to reach that huh moment.

#aroace #arospec #acespec #exploring identities through fiction #hazbin hotel and its fanfic has been an eye opening journey #like I was pleased to find out daud from dishonored was ace #but daud and dishonored fic don't quite have that same exploration that hazbin and alastor fic do #they don't have that journey of information #and I think that's part of why I'm really loving alastor #because there IS a journey with this character #because this character ALSO seems unaware of himself #so yeah

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