Latest Posts by aroacebaggins - Page 2

Pope Francis has died.

I know to a lot of people on the left and in the LGBTQ+ community, he wasn’t exactly seen as a holy herald of progressive values. That said I think he was more helpful to our community than we have ever really given credit.

The Catholic Church is hugely entrenched in the past. They may not ever accept gay marriage within our lifetime. But if you compare Pope Francis to any other Pope that came before him, he did more to progress the Catholic Church than anyone else ever has. He constantly spoke out saying that the church needed to accept LGBTQ+ members. He has denounced laws that criminalise homosexuality. He supported same sex civil unions—which I was literally taught was evil and dangerous when I was in Catholic high school. Transgender people can be baptized and same sex couples can be blessed because of him.

He was never enough, of course. He has affirmed the teaching that gay marriage is not spiritually possible and prior to becoming pope he opposed the legalization of same sex marriage. He has said gay children should seek psychiatric care. He has also been even less accepting of transgender people than same sex couples.

But at the same time he was the most empathetic Pope to have existed in the past several hundred years. I have left the church because I no longer believe in God, but I do recognize that the Catholic Church has power over huge swaths of the world. My mother still believes in her Catholic faith and has always stood by this idea: it’s impossible to move a behemoth organisation like the Church overnight. She stays in the community because she wants it to become better. She pushes, in her own small way, a little bit every day towards what she thinks is right. In this conversation, that is the acceptance of LGBTQ+ youths. Pope Francis was helpful in moving the Church away from a stance of hate. Now I hope that whoever the cardinals choose next for pope is someone who joins her in pushing that ball forward.

Rings of Power meme dump part 6!

The first has the correct vibes but actually my pet peeve this season was the elves' seeming incredibly lax views on forge safety (as someone who's done a bit of metal working). Like okay, Annatar is excused. But Eru Mirdania, pull your damn hair back girl. (Mini rant over)

We all know that Halenthir has impeccable vibes, but no one can convince me that Haleth isn't a raging lesbian. Luckily, there's an obvious solution to this problem: transfem Caranthir. In this essay I will-

Weird kind of validation to having to call a physical therapy session early for the third time in a row. I got a cold a couple weeks ago so my heart rate is still being even stupider than usual. It's incredibly frustrating obviously, but it's also honestly nice to see some stats clearly representing a problem after my doctor refused to refer me to a cardiologist for more testing because he ran a preliminary test wrong 🙃

Also got told I should be walking less to recover unfortunately. I need to PACE and go for WALKS. Real stupid I think.

hi all, this is oddly specific but a friendly reminder to check up on your queer/trans friends with catholic backgrounds today!

the pope is dead. there are varying feelings going around this, but many of us are scared because pope franics was honestly relatively considerate of the lgbtq+ community (for a pope), and the next pope is not super likely to be, which affects way more than you'd think in some religious communities and households.

sending love to all 🤍

This. They hate all of us, we're not any better to them.

There's also a bit of... I think unintentional support of other queerphobia when people say stuff about how asexuals aren't doing anything. As the post discussed, we are seen as a threat to a lot of people, but I think the intent when aspecs say this is more like "we're not hurting anybody/doing anything wrong". But the thing is... Neither are trans people or gay people or other queer identities. When people say stuff like that, it's almost agreeing like "I can see why you don't like them, but we're different".

So there are several issues. I do think a lot of it comes from people not really knowing aphobia exists or even within our community not understanding how strong it is in some groups.

tbh I really dislike how aphobia tends to be discussed whenever there's some kind of incident that makes it visible to general society. The most common response seems to be some variation of "why would anyone hate asexual/aromantic people, they aren't even doing anything" and it just always sits wrong with me. It paints such a passive picture of our existence and feels like a comment influenced by the level of invisibility that aspec people have in society. Why would you be annoyed by someone who is practically invisible? Just go back to ignoring their existence, it's easy!

But despite the invisibility, aspec people are actually doing quite a lot of things that will piss off queerphobic, right-wing and religious people (and hell, even left-wing people). And the most obvious point is that we are actively not performing heterosexuality the way they want us to. People who's entire world view is "cis men and women should be in monogamous, heterosexual marriage and have (white) babies" are not going to lean back and say "oh but those asexuals and aromantics are fine". They will also hate our guts, and they will come up with all sorts of reasons, including insinuating we're all secretly into bestiality, or mentally ill, or not human, or attention seeking children. It's just plain old queerphobia, and like all queerphobia, there's no inherent logic to it which you can worm your way out of by "not doing anything".

And like, there's a lot more that aspec people do which people hate. Raising awareness about amatonormativity? People feel attacked, they hate it. Asexual people having sex? Or not having sex? People hate it! Aromantic people being in (seemingly) romantic relationships? People fucking hate it! Aromantic people having sex? Ohh people hate that!!

I guess the existence of aphobia can be confusing when you haven't spent much time thinking about asexuality and aromanticism, but in the end, these are identities that aren't heteronormative and they will be hit with the same or similar bigotry as any other queer identity. I just get tired of this response after seeing it recycled for 10 years without ever seeming to go any further.

linguistics hcs: voseo in (fëanorian) quenya

i am currently taking a course on spanish dialects and yesterday we talked about "voseo" which in oversimplified terms is a variation in 2nd person informal pronouns and verbs, e.g. tú tienes -> vos tenís. the rules and commonality of voseo depend largely on the region, so in some places it is the default, in some places it is not used or barely used at all, and in some places it is a complicated little shit (for example, here in chile, you will sometimes hear the tú pronoun with the vos form of the verb, e.g. tú tenís, and the vos pronoun is reserved for Very familiar or informal situations).

my knowledge of quenya grammar is pre-elementary, so everything i am about to say is based exclusively on what i think would be fun, but!!!! let's go back to valinor in the years of the trees. while i'm pretty sure tolkien never made a distinction between formal/informal 2nd person in quenya, i do think the noldor would have naturally created one (they were big fans of their monarchy which would lead to quite the hierarchical society, they canonically mess around w grammatical rules for fun, and i also can't imagine they wouldn't employ a high level of formality when speaking to the ainur or at least the valar in particular).

now, i am a big fan of the hc that fëanor created the exclusive 1st person plural in quenya (as in "WE do this but YOU the listener do NOT") so he could make subtle grammatical jabs at indis and her kids. we also know the fëanorians used linguistic differences as political markers (see: shibboleth of fëanor). ALL THIS TO SAY, i think fëanor also created a quenya equivalent of voseo. it's not an exact equivalent because of historical context and reasoning for the shift in spanish, but suspend ur disbelief. here's what i think happened in quenya:

c. the noldor's arrival in valinor, they introduced a formal 2nd person form ("usted" for the sake of comparing this to spanish) (this was probably also picked up by the vanyar, if u care) (i will think about telerin languages another day, i'm already giving myself a headache)

fëanor, in an effort to distinguish his house and followers from the rest of the finwëans (specifically the nolofinwëans bc this is fëanor we're talking about), introduced a More Familiar informal 2nd person (see: chilean voseo) used only among the fëanorians

fëanorian "voseo" functions very similarly to chilean voseo overall. the pronoun itself is reserved for very informal/familiar contexts, close relationships, etc, but the VERB takes over from the standard informal form ("tú" conjugations) in the fëanorian dialect as another political marker

so for example, fëanor would "vos tenís" his kids, but "tú tenís" fingolfin's kids

i am inclined to say that this shift happens after the unchaining of melkor, when the political divide is a lot more dramatic, and therefore the whole thing is very controversial, but definitely is the standard in formenos during the exile

could also be used for dramatic effect

imagine the scenes if fëanor addressed fingolfin w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "get thee gone and take thy due place"

imagine the scenes if fingolfin addressed fëanor w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "thou shalt lead and i will follow"!!!!!

the fëanorians in beleriand definitely preserved this, bc of course they did

whether this phenomenon exists in other languages besides quenya i am unsure

i am too exhausted after all that to write any sort of proper conclusion. i hope it made sense. feel free to ask questions or add things on. live laugh linguistics

That's awesome 😂 It really is so perfect!

Rings of Power meme dump part 2!

made a meme because what do you mean i’m questioning my sexuality again even tho i’ve been secure in my identity for the past 10 years 😭

Rings of Power meme dump part 5!

I didn't have all these files anymore so I had to go get them from my Pinterest, the first image got a little cut off for some reason sorry.

Thinking about how I'm both non-binary and aroace like I made only one choice in life and it was "no."

Excited for Andor??? 👀

Rings of Power meme dump part 4!

Made this a little while ago, I'll be doing more when I have the spoons for it lol.

The Silmarillion as Vines

sometimes i question whether im actually ace or not and then i see allo ppl talking and go "oh. oh god yea definitely ace"

Reminds me of when I went to a Renaissance festival with a big wooden staff and I was so excited because I didn't have to worry about my balance so much. And then it still took me months to start using a cane even just at home

A reminder that if you didn’t need a mobility aid you wouldn’t be day dreaming and fantasizing about how they would help you navigate the world and that no matter how much internalized ableism you hold it won’t change your reality about your conditions and you SHOULD do what is best for you because no one will punish you more than yourself if you keep ignoring your needs

Rings of Power meme dump part 3!

When I say I'm "Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing." this is what I mean:

My experience with being oriented aroace is basically just not sexual or romantic attraction but a secret third thing but idk what the secret third thing is and tbh I don't care what it is, I just know that Women

What doesn't kill you flares up and tries again

Yes! So, I am a disabled and chronically ill aroace cane user. I fully understand that not all disabled people are aspec and vice versa. But some are! What we really need is more variety in representation, but there's just not enough of it in the first place.

There can be issues with characters like this depending on their story and how their identity is handled. For example, I think the way Viktor from Arcane was confirmed as ace was... not the best, and potentially insulting to some aspecs and disabled people. It could have been done better. BUT that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad!

With Viktor specifically, I totally get why some people don't want him to be ace, and they're welcome to have other headcanons, I will never begrudge someone that. But the problem starts when I tell someone I like him being ace because I see myself even more in him (I was also starting to use a cane around the time I watched the show, and seeing him made me so much more comfortable using it), and they tell me that it's inherently offensive. Because it's not actually, otherwise so is my existence. You don't have to agree or see him as ace, but please do not invalidate my identity and experiences.

I saw a post that made me think.

Why do people say it's ableist for disabled characters to have aromantic or asexual identity in headcanons or canon? It's seriously weird how people are mad at stuff like that. Having an identity like that is not a bad thing.

I'm asexual, autistic and physically disabled. Is it ableist that I exist like that? I like headcanoning characters who are autistic coded as asexual because it makes me happy because they are like me in my head.

I have seen people online be mad at others for headcanoning a disabled character or autistic coded to have an aromantic or asexual identity. People even get mad at disabled people who share those identities for headcanoning like that. I don't know what is up with that.

Some people seem to be mad only because they think things like an aromantic or asexual identity implies that the character that is disabled will not want things like being intimate, but that is not true. It is up to the person who has that identity, they can choose to be intimate or not intimate. Things like that confuse me. Like how people talk about Viktor from arcane.

I like Viktor, I am happy he is asexual canonically. It means he can still have a relationship with Jayce hypothetically, though. His asexuality is valid no matter what way he is portrayed.

Viktor is my favorite character. Seeing Viktor in Arcane made me feel better about using a cane when my health got worse, I felt internalized ableism at that time. Seeing a depiction of someone who is like me in a way helped me. Learning he is asexual made me happier too because he is also like me in that way, too.

Asexuality is defined as experiencing no sexual feelings or desires; not feeling sexual attraction to anyone. And I think it should be fine for Viktor to be like that and it should be fine for everyone who feels that way.

Let people on the aro/ace spectrum be who they are, disabled people can be like that and still have intimate relationships. And let people headcanon whatever they want as long as they're not harming people.

And that is my thoughts on that. I hope I wrote that in an accurate way. I just feel confused about that topic. People are so hard to understand.

[Disclaimer, obviously not all people think the how I described about asexuality. Some people are fine with disabled characters having an aromantic or asexual identity. And when I say aromantic or asexual identity, I am referring to the whole spectrum of those identities.]

So during Rings of Power season 2, there was a bit of theorizing going around that Mirdania would turn out to be Celebrían. Personally I'm glad that wasn't the case. However it got me thinking. What if Celebrían was one of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain? With her parents living in Eregion for a while and all that, it could potentially fit in very nicely. I had to draw her of course.

So I've been obsessing over that AU(?) idea... I haven't got much concrete yet but I definitely have Ideas.

I've been trying to get back into writing more recently, so there is a chance I'll try to put together a fic with this concept. It would be my first real attempt at fanfic. 😬 I enjoy reading it but I've never really tried it for myself. So. Not sure. I'll see if this goes anywhere but I at least wanted to share the art.

Part: 245/?

Sure, I might not be as healthy as some people, but can they do this? *stands up and passes out*

Rings of Power meme dump part 2!

im tired of people having these little nuances like i was talking about the word hate and i said “i hate nazis” and my friend was like hmm hates a strong word. for nazis ? no the fuck it is not. i could use stronger words too. i could curbstomp their sorry asses. i hate nazis and you all better hate nazis too

it's crazy how people will use AI, something that kills trees, to 'create' Tolkien 'art' like JRR Tolkien himself wouldn't have hated AI with his entire being just for the tree murder alone... and that's not even getting to the artistic theft.

"average elf uses 3 brain cells a year" factoid actually statistical error. average elf uses 0 brain cells per year. Braincells Elrond, who lives in Imladris & uses 10,000 brain cells every day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

For @aspecardaweek: Day Seven: Freeform

Elrond....was as noble and fair as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer.