![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
a meme
I am annoyed by absolutely everything today. Therefore, I meme. Grabbed from around, slightly modified.
Give me a character and I'll tell you some things:
1. How I feel about this character
2. All the people I ship romantically and/or sexually with this character
3. Favorite gen relationship(s) for this character
4. My unpopular opinion about this character
5. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
6. Random pet theory about this character that you won't convince me is not true.
7. A song or piece of music I associate with this character.
Any characters in any fandoms I know are fair game. But a lot of my fannish thoughts currently are about The Magnus Archives, Rusty Quill Gaming, and Stellar Firma.
Give me a character and I'll tell you some things:
1. How I feel about this character
2. All the people I ship romantically and/or sexually with this character
3. Favorite gen relationship(s) for this character
4. My unpopular opinion about this character
5. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
6. Random pet theory about this character that you won't convince me is not true.
7. A song or piece of music I associate with this character.
Any characters in any fandoms I know are fair game. But a lot of my fannish thoughts currently are about The Magnus Archives, Rusty Quill Gaming, and Stellar Firma.
Re: tl;dr
The one thing that makes me mildly homicidal -- and I have seen this a few times - is when authors go "well he just didn't love Georgie that much so he wasn't interested in sex with her"
Ugh, yes. I mean, Jon/Georgie is a relationship that ended, so I think we can assume that there were problems. But for (some people in) fandom to translate that into Georgie-bashing is icky. Especially since, in any of Jon's adult relationships--romantic or friendships--I'd bet that a good 70% of the problem was always Jon.
that Jon's lack of desire would leave Martin feeling unseen/unwanted
This issue is one that I think a lot of fics with asexual characters in romantic relationships with non-asexual characters tend to gloss over. (I don't mean in TMA, where I've read practically nothing, but in general.) There seem to be a lot of fics that go like this:
A: I love you!
B: I love you too! But I'm asexual. We can never have sex of any kind.
A: Oh, okay! I am not asexual but this is absolutely not an issue for me, so we'll just snuggle!
It ignores so much--everything from the emotional importance (for many people) of sex in a romantic relationship to the toll that feeling undesired by a partner can take on someone's self-esteem. (And in the TMA context specifically, this sort of thing makes me feel super protective of Martin, who definitely has a tendency towards "I will sacrifice all my feelings and needs on the altar of my love for Jon." He's gotten much better, during and after S4, at setting boundaries and giving importance to his own well-being, and I really really don't want to see him put back into a self-abnegating position.)
To be clear, I wouldn't want to see Jon making himself miserable to please Martin, either. But Jon doesn't have the same pattern of sacrificing himself to be loved that Martin does.
Re: tl;dr
*nodnod* That seems very wise, then. Good to be aware of one's own limits.
I mean, Jon/Georgie is a relationship that ended, so I think we can assume that there were problems.
Oh yeah, but there's no reason to think that "they didn't really love each other at the time" was one of them. And it's so unnecessary to throw that in as a way of boosting Martin's significance or explaining why the relationship with him might be different.
There seem to be a lot of fics that go like this:
A: I love you!
B: I love you too! But I'm asexual. We can never have sex of any kind.
A: Oh, okay! I am not asexual but this is absolutely not an issue for me, so we'll just snuggle!
Which has validity as a fantasy, I think -- it's not any more unrealistic that any other fics where people's sexual and romantic needs magically turn out to be completely compatible with no negotiation or complicated conversations required ("I am into this highly-specific kink!" "Fortuitously, I am also into this exact same kink in a complementary way!").
Sometimes fic's all about the fantasy, and frequently I have to go "okay, this is not my fantasy or what I was looking for here, but it's obviously what someone needs".
And I do hate the idea that being in a relationship with an asexual person inherently and inevitably has to be a terrible sacrifice for an allosexual person.
But yeah, personally I wanna see them have to do some figuring out to get to a place where both of them are getting their needs (emotional and otherwise) met. I want to see the workings!
... apparently my narrative kink is Awkward Negotiations.
and I really really don't want to see him put back into a self-abnegating position.
Fervently agreed. Also new confident-with-boundaries Martin is such a good look on him.
Martin deserves to be loved and cherished and have all the orgasms.
But Jon doesn't have the same pattern of sacrificing himself to be loved that Martin does.
On the other hand, he has a different pattern of sacrificing himself for others because he thinks he's monstrous/inhuman/responsible for everything bad that's ever happened, etc.. and also has no sense of self-protection at all. And I'm fairly sure that however he thinks of his sexuality, he's got it filed as part of why he is Bad At Relationships. So they both have the potential to be disasters here.
On the third hand, they've also reached a point where -- as we're seeing in S5 -- they can be really good for each other, and they're navigating really well around having different needs and boundaries (e.g. Jon's need to "vent" versus Martin's need to not have all the horrors of the fearscape poured into his brain).
I love them so much.