omg, your podcast episode on Somerton is exploding on youtube. How are you guys handling it? I've followed you for a while and it's wild to see a video suddenly get 80k views when it was impressive for the prior posts to break 1000. Hopefully nothing but good things come of it, but I imagine it's overwhelming!

Overwhelming, YES!

Thank you so much for asking and checking in. We're over 120k now and that's just on YouTube! We've also spiked in several charts on the podcast platforms these last couple of weeks. We actually charted in our 50th country! An exciting achievement, but honestly not the way we wanted it.

We've received an abundance of emails, DMs, comments, etc, and some of them are COMPLETELY ABSURD! Some people have made fun of us or reveled in the fact that we lost money, basically blaming us for not being smarter. Got a really goofy message basically saying we have the ideology of....terrorists?? But the most common criticism we've seen is basically making the "reverse-racism" argument that we're weird, horrible people for pointing out that James Somerton is a cis white guy. So, y'know, that's fun -_-

But despite all this, we've received an overwhelming amount of love and support! The positive far outweighs the negative. And to our surprise and delight, we've only seen 3 acephobic comments directed at us and/or the community so far. One of those comments was the good-ol' trifecta of acephobia, transphobia, and ableist, go figure, but given how big our episode got, this is PROGRESS! We don't recall ever seeing anything Ace-related to get this much attention but receive this little hate.

We watched the apology video and despite it being an objectively bad apology video...we're a little messed up and very concerned about the implication that James attempted to take his own life. Then he deleted the video, and never sent the promised email to Telos supporters. We, of course, have our own thoughts, feelings, frustrations, and even unique observations that were never mentioned in the original episode, but for now we've decided to keep these to ourselves.

We genuinely hope for his healing, and after this week's episode, we are unlikely to ever speak about him publicly again.

So, James Somerton released an "apology" video. Here's a summary for people who don't want to give him the views:

He hasn't learned shit from this. He's not going to stop. The video is a manipulative tactic to try to milk some more patreon subs out of people. And speaking of which:

James Somerton has reactivated his Patreon. If you are still subbed to him, unsub before the end of the month so you don't give more money to this manipulative shithead.

He starts the video by saying the drama has caused him to attempt suicide. Whether he actually did or not, he shouldn't be starting his apology video by talking about it. It's a manipulation tactic to try to get you to feel sorry for him and see him as a victim.

He then prceeds to spend most of the video blaming everyone other than himself for everything. He mostly blames Nick, who he's apparently let go from the channel, for most of the factual errors, but he also blames viewers for:

"Believing he was a journalist" and was therefore responsible for providing accurate and original information.

Not understanding that he wasn't "really" aphobic/misogynist.

Requesting videos he didn't want to make, which made him more tempted to steal other people's work.

Not cutting him enough slack because he credited a couple of the people in title sequences that he stole entire paragraphs from.

It's also wild that he says he's not trying to throw Nick under the bus right before spending most of the video repeatedly throwing him under the bus.

Basically, he's not going to change. He might get better at hiding his plagiarism. He might stop making up as many outright lies, but he's very clearly only upset because it affected his cashflow and not because he actually hurt people.

Don't give him money. Don't watch his videos. Don't even hate watch his videos. Let him disappear off the face of the internet, because that's what he deserves.

I've seen videos going around about this guy, but this is one I haven't seen a lot of, despite it being a really, really good one. So, just sharing as a recommendation.

We were personally victimized by James Somerton

If you don't know the situation already, previous videos on the topic can be found here and here!

I really loved @theacecouple’s latest podcast on finding community out of the James Somerton situation!

I think I am finally coming to terms with the fact that I am aspec myself thanks to seeing other ace people in the public eye!

In the name of this community that has helped me discover this facet of my identity, I want to promote The Ace Couple’s MarketplACE where aspec creators are spotlighted:

Thank you guys for being active members of this community and making it easier for others to be active as well!

my thoughts on The Ace Couple's recent hazbin hotel podcast episode <33

ok so number 1, they're lowkey selling me on asexual husk like the card imagery ???? the way he rejects angels advances ?????? i kinda hc it now...

number 2 i def agree about how bad the rep in the show is its barley mentioned and most of the fans who arent knowledgable online wouldnt know it at all ToT

number 3, im so happy they talked about alastor being aroace <333 i was wondering when they would

i had other little things but in general, i def agree

the podcast episode for anyone who wants to watch ^^

Kevin Can Fuck Himself is an amazing show that plays with sitcom and drama style and also has a QPP (queer platonic relationship). Great recap by The Ace Couple. Go watch the show and listen to the pod ep. Its so good!!

Next week is Ace Week, and A-specs Committed to Anti-Racism (ACAR) is hosting a panel on Disabled BIPOC Aces next week for Disabled Ace Day!!

AND, our lovely incredible friend, Courtney Lane of The Ace Couple podcast, is going to be on it! The Ace Couple have been guests on our stream a few times, and Courtney always has the best stories, so you know it's going to be an interesting time <3 Plus, Courtney is THE FOUNDER of both Disabled Ace Day and ACAR, so, y'know. She's kind of a big deal. <3

Discovered the Ace Couple podcast because of their Somerton episode and I'm sitting here listening to them trying to work out what lust is and whether it implies directed attraction

Senpais, 'lust' is just a scam by the Church to sell purity culture. Accidentally staring at someone conventionally attractiv is lustful. Random bones ar lustful.

I feel like @theacecouple are the acepec (and aspec more generally) community's parents.

I didn't see anything from somerton until about a month ago when he popped up in my recs and I ended up binging his content for about 2 days, but something kept being off and I noticed some of the lies/ignorance, and there was something really dismissive and weird about how he talked about aspecs and women in particular... I stopped watching him cause I watched one of you guys' podcast and realized I also just felt like crap after his videos.

I did end up getting his rwrb video in my recs when it came out cause of the binge and I just remember leaving a comment about the way he talked about aces in it. It was especially upsetting seeing people in the comments who were simply happy he mentioned aspecs at all. He replied to me just saying his cowriter was ace. I don't reply to youtube comments but I just remember wanting to point out that same co-writer he was using as a shield said aces don't face discrimination or conversion therapy, and in that video wrote that aces have to have sex to find out they don't like it. Being something doesn't make you instantly know everything about it, as somerton himself demonstrates with his ignorant comments about gay history.

I'm not really one of his victims since I avoided him as soon as I found him, but I feel bad for all the people he tricked and/or guilted into believing him. I hope some other creators make videos exposing the weird way he manipulated the queer community, cause I think a lot of young folks could use a breakdown of it.

Anyways I just wanted to finish by saying I love you guys' work and learning from you. You helped me understand why certain phrases make me upset, and that and watching your podcast back to back with his videos helped me figure out what I didn't like about Somerton, so you helped protect me from him and not convince myself I was just being Weird as I often do when I get Bad Vibes from someone.

Thank you so much for reaching out <3

It's so fascinating that you stopped watching Somerton after finding us. We've tried to keep things as professional as possible these last 2 years by only citing directly harmful things he's done to us and direct members of our community, and even then it was sparingly and as kind as possible.

When we first spoke with him about including Asexual representation in his future Telos endeavors, he assured us that not only was there already an Ace in the writers' room, but that two real, fully-fleshed out Ace characters were already being written. This was encouraging! After all, we had no way of knowing if he was the kind of cis gay man who loathes Aces or doesn't view us as queer. Since this didn't seem to be the case and rep is important, we supported him. We now deeply regret not doing our research on him first.

Even before his video "The Queer Erasure of Asexuality", we started watching a few of his YouTube videos for the first time and some of the subtext was NOT kind to our community. Subtle things that we'd see get repeated by his fans over and over again, like how queer art is bad these days because all the "artists" and the "exciting queers" who "really lived" died in the AIDS crisis. Or the implication that the Interview with the Vampire reboot was *more queer* because the vampires actually had gay sex on screen, despite this being a complete departure from the source material and neglecting the fact that Anne Rice's vampires have always been undeniably queer *and also* sexless. In fact, we didn't say his name, but we did mention some vague "bad takes" we saw about the series in our podcast episodes 75 & 76 The Triumphs and Failures of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire Part 1 and Part 2...At least some of those came from James.

We did not see his rwrb video, because we had long given up on him by that point, but it is not at all surprising to hear that he had bad takes and also hid behind Nick once again to shield himself from any criticism. It was very much his MO, and yet we're also certain we've heard him chastise straight women for using the "I have a gay friend" defense.

It is so good to hear that our podcast has been helpful to you. There are FAR too many Aces who are willing to let bad behavior or ill-informed takes slide just because someone with a decent following noticed us. We deserve so much better.

I'm disgusted by a big part of the Twitter and Reddit with all the Nazi symbolism used recently and the invading Denmark memes. As someone from an occupied nation, it was heartbreaking to see how lightly people (and, let's face it, it was people from countries who aren't in war nor occupied) can make fun of invading someone else, but it's gone WAY TOO FAR when some people are joking about creating a Fourth Reich.

I know that there are, statistically, ace people who are neo-Nazis (same way that there are gay people who are neo-Nazis, trans people who are neo-Nazis, women who are neo-Nazis, POC who are neo-Nazis and Slavs who are neo-Nazis, as contradictory as it may seem). But I don't believe all those people who are sharing this are neo-Nazis or are even aware of how they're participating in a neo-Nazis publicity campaign for a group of people who already feels marginalized and alone and so is easy to recruit.

For this reason I want to share a podcast episode that explains the problems with it, for the well-meaning people who were ignorant enough to share that shit. It's this episode of The Ace Couple: https://youtu.be/xBdyYuXEwIc

Like many other Europeans, I have relatives who were killed in a gas chamber by the Nazis because of their political ideas. And let me tell you, that trauma affects generations. I can't even IMAGINE how anyone thinks it's even remotely funny to joke about marching under the Iron Cross in ace flag colours to invade countries (even more countries like Denmark who were actually occupied by Nazis!).

Even more so when on Tumblr some years ago there were aphobic blogs dedicated to spreading hate towards ace people by making people associate asexuality with all the horrible things, including Nazism and stuff like Margaret Thatcher. Those got spread wide by aphobes and random people without a clear idea of who ace people are but who thought it funny and bought into the whole "aces are white incels and their fight for rights is unjustified and pathetic" thing as a result of it. And now there are some ace people sharing the same shit themselves but claiming it's good or funny! What the hell is wrong with our generation?!!

It's urgent and vital that we stop ANYONE we see spreading that imagery and speech, on Twitter, Discord or wherever.

Ever since I started listening to The Ace Couple podcast, I've felt a lot less weird about being on the ace spectrum.

I've always found it hard to articulate how my interest in people romantically could extend to a willingness to engage in sexual activity, but not a personal desire or need to. And they do a really good job at making me feel like that's okay. 💜

Cuntiest defense attorneys to ever serve

asl bros doodles sketches and scribbles from the past few days. for the soul