When I Talk About How I Don't Like Sex, It's So People Like Me Can Feel "more Normal" And Not So "broken".

Just because she's gone doesn't mean everything is perfect. (More discussion in the Read More)

OHHHH IM NORMAL IM SO NORMAL DO YOU KNOW HOW NORMAL I AM ABOUT THESE TWO???? THE REGULAR AMOUNT OF NORMAL.

Quad's arc between 20-G4 is something I go back to constantly, episode 23 specifically. But this comic was inspired by a moment in G4, when Quad went out to get coffee for the group, which included Blora and Susan.

I think it was a difficult transition for Quad to go from catering to Order's every wish because that's what he thought love was, to understanding that people will like him just the way he is, not for what he can do. But it's okay, he now has a support system that will help him along :')

Multi-Phase boss fights where they change design and attack pattern are a Trans Allegory™ and it means they respect the player's skill enough to show them their true self before being defeated.

I've spent a lot of my life depressed for reasons unrelated to my identity. Life has a unique talent for beating the unprepared harder, and while my lot was not the hardest, I was certainly ill fit to bear its weight. When I eventually dragged myself, cold and wet, from its grasp I found myself wishing to be numb again and wishing I knew what it was like to truly care about something.

In that vein, I've always had a fascination with love and romantic affection. A combination of being denied tenderness for the half of my life I could still remember and a genuine desire to study what I didn't understand left me with an insatiable desire to consume tender, romantic media.

The idea of the thing appealed to me like the willpower of a warrior training, or the righteous anger of a hero who has lost their home. Something that gave you just a taste of what they were feeling just by watching them feel it, but whose scale you probably could not emulate. Those emotions are for characters in stories, as fictional as the magics or demons they face.

Did you know that there are special nerves in your skin that are designed for social touch? They have a direct line to the serotonin response and take 3 real world seconds to get there. This is the nerve that causes/cures touch starvation, the reason why characters can feel the lips of a lovers kiss for seconds afterward as their lips tingle electrically, the reason why a character can be wrapped in a hug in shock for a few seconds before they break down crying in grief.

All of these I thought were artistic fiction. Like someone with aphantasia learning that others really do visualize things, or me realizing other people store memories in video. It also brought up a question I posed to my therapist: "why, if I've been without social contact for most of my life, am I not touch starved?'

She answered in two options:

1 - everyone is different, and some people have more or less of certain needs.

2 - how do you know you're not?

one of these days I'm going to have to find a reliable source of media to satisfy my chest pain inducing love of necromancers, or I'm going to turn to dark magics to make a bunch of zombie ants and go to war with the local ant mounds.

Weird post, nobody asked, but I think I just... Do Not pay attention to the appearances of others. I'm very keen on noticing clothing and habits but not, like, the stuff that doesn't change. My friends inform me that I am approaching 'Dave with a haircut?' levels of oblivious.

So, apparently, I have been wrong about the ethnicities of most of my friends. It doesn't matter, but it feels weird to not have had that data already, when I've been friends with them for half a damn decade, and I've met their parents. Just sort of inexcusable to not notice.

On top of this, something I have known is that I am a bad judge of at-a-glance gender presentation detection. I have asked people their gender for years, to the point I don't even think about it not being a typical question where I live.

And not only am I bad, I'm like, fuckin horrible. Part of why I acclimated to fast to the concept of gender identity when I was young was being genuinely unable to determine any feminine or masculine traits from any person with hair. Asking was so easy. So clear cut. Still is. Maybe this is some kinda Neuro-nontypicality, but I ain't no governmence scientician.

I think this might be a side effect of being my specific brand of aroace, but I have a hard time thinking of someone as handsome or beautiful, and kinda just feel nothing about the normally heavily scrutinized features most people attribute to attractiveness.

Maybe synergizing my Class Passive [Aroace disinterest] with my [Poor Memory] debuff has resulted in the Trait [Retroactive Face Blindness] being applied to me.

Something I struggle with is the question of if I'm 'strong' or 'weak'.

Not to steel-ball-run my words but I mean in the sense of a protagonist. Some protagonists have a mind of steel. They take hardship on the chin and take on the burden of responsibility, or honor, or martyrdom. The stories I love to read the most are characters with little to no talent. They grind at the wall of talent and background until nothing remains, through the power of concerted effort and their only true talent of the iron will.

But I don't have that. I never have. I don't even find it relatable. I have spent my entire life keenly aware of it. I coast on talent, I lean on familial benefits, I give up when the going gets tough, and I choose the path of least resistance and most stability.

When I grew up the faculty of my school always would put the word GRIT on the walls. This hard won effort and willingness to endure that they advertised as the height of true internal strength. At the time, I was far too mentally ill, and found it insulting. Don't they know that some people can't afford effort?

Then time passed. I stamped down some illnesses and corralled some others, I become a new man a dozen times. And every time I'd check. Just maybe I'm strong now. Please. Please make me someone who can withstand hardship. Because I lived in fear of falling into hard times and being unwilling to survive them.

Other people lived in spite of circumstance. They fought and whether they win or lose it let them grow as a person. I just built myself from spare parts. I did not grow organically, I just kept replacing pieces of myself until I looked like a real person.

So I wondered. Did I live well under an unfathomable weight, and now I simply do not feel it? Or have I always lived it on easy street, whining over something small? Or is it some combination, and if so, am I stronger than I was when I was younger? Or have I grown complacent?

It's meaningless. I know it is. There's no way to quantify it. I'll just have to live without knowing if what I'm fighting is strong enough to warrant my current standard of suffering.

heard they’re making it easier tomorrow. not sure if it’s true, but don’t you wanna find out?

a few weeks ago I just discovered that banded amethysts exist, which are really pretty yk

again, quite pretty :D

Then I found this bowl:

Its a beautiful bowl, and i wouldn't usually use it for food

because it's perfect for holding all my fucks to give.

do you ever think about the first computer that ever sang. do you ever think about how we taught it a love song. do you ever think about that