My Friend: *updates Me On Her Relationship Encounters*

Nocturnal/Diurnal - Unfired

(Nocturnal/Diurnal - Fired)

Kickstarter time!

Currently I make resin skull jewelry which I’ve been selling in my etsy shop Skullery for a few years now. I’d like to expand and start producing a line of silver and bronze jewelry. I’ve spent the past 6 months learning how to make them and producing the examples you see here (and there’s more on the Kickstarter page). 

Now I need your help! The equipment I need to cast these pieces isn’t cheap, so I need enough people interested in my work in order for me to buy the tools I need and start production. 

I’d like to spread this as far as I can, so this post also doubles as a giveaway! Reblog this post to enter, no need to follow me, and when the project ends on June 1st I’ll pick three winners randomly for a bronze crow claw necklace, a bronze fox claw necklace, and a silver mini sparrow necklace (check out the project page to see them!). The first winner will have first choice, and so on. I have these pieces already made so even if the kickstarter isn’t funded you’ll still get them. And if you back the kickstart and win we’ll make sure you don’t get the same thing twice if you don’t want to.

Thanks for taking a look! If you cant back the project but want to help, spread the word! <3

So I was just minding my own business, opening up a new MTG booster pack with my boyfriend when…

W- … Will Graham?!

You seem pretty open about this, and I don't know anyone else to ask, but you can ignore this completely if you need to. I think I might be asexual? But I'm not sure. I've never looked and someone and thought sex, and usually sex just sounds meh at best. But I have had it before, and I liked it? Is it possible for me to still be ace, or if not, what am I? Thank you

::puts on Official Asexual hat::

I can’t, despite this fabulous hat, actually make a ruling on your sexual orientation or how you want to identify. But that said: the definition of asexuality, as I understand it, is a sexual orientation that consists of not feeling sexual attraction to anyone. Period. Everything after that is a different question. Your sexual orientation is about who you feel sexually attracted to and if the group of people you feel sexually attracted to is [file not found] then, congratulations, you’re asexual and you are entitled to cake.

I think that a lot of confusion–and especially a lot of the people who basically feel like they want to identify as asexual but don’t qualify–comes from piling two or three different factors onto the identity of asexuality and conflating them, or treating them like the more of those factors you have, the MORE asexual you are, like there is a ~gold star asexual~ class that you only get into if you are attracted to no one, have never had sex, never want to have sex or even think about sex, think sex is totally gross and inexplicable, and never experience sexual urges or sensations. But that’s a whole bunch of other factors getting piled on to a sexual orientation in a way that just demands you fit into a stereotype.

Sexual orientation: What group of people, broadly speaking, do you look at and think: Ooh I want to have sex with you.

If it is people of the opposite gender, heterosexual! Same gender, gay/lesbian/homosexual as applies in your case! Two or more genders, bisexual or pansexual or omnisexual or some other word according to fine gradations of meaning and gender identity and so on! If nobody, ever, asexual! If very few people, very rarely, generally for reasons other than physical/gender characteristics, demisexual or gray-asexual!

Sexual behavior: Do you have sex? Have you ever? Do you masturbate? How?

These are all super prone to be influenced by circumstances! Maybe you’re really young or you have moral/religious/emotional/psychological/etc reasons to refrain from having sex. This doesn’t mean you can’t belong to ANY of the sexual orientations listed above; you can absolutely be gay or straight or bi or pan before you’ve had sex with anybody, or if you’re currently not having sex.

Maybe you are or were in a relationship with somebody, of any gender, who did or didn’t belong to the group of people you find you’re sexually attracted to, and you had sex with them–because they wanted to, because you wanted to for reasons other than sexual attraction, because you thought you would find you liked it once you tried it, because you didn’t really think about reasons and it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

That ALSO doesn’t mean that you automatically belong or don’t belong to any sexual orientation listed above. Gay people experiment or even wind up in lifelong sexual relationships with people of the opposite sex for various reasons; straight people have sex once or many times with people of their own gender; bisexuals do not have to perpetually have sex with people of both genders to still be really bi; asexuals can have sex and still be asexual.

[There is not a good word for this one–Sexual enjoyment, maybe?]: Quite aside from how skilled you or your partner are, do you basically LIKE the sexual behavior you engage in, if any? 

There are a bunch of variations to this–some people just really really like sex even when it doesn’t result in orgasms, some people think sex is gross and unpleasant even when it’s taking place in a loving relationship and technically everything is going great, even when they’re masturbating in exactly the way they prefer. For some people this dislike or discomfort might come from trauma or social conditioning that sex is dirty or wrong, but for lots of people it’s just how they feel! THERE IS NO INNATE REASON WHY THIS SHOULD CORRELATE TO WHO YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO. A person could be attracted to everyone in the world and still think the actual act of sex involving their own actual body is really gross and unpleasant and not desired, or a person could never be attracted to anyone and still find themselves having a rad time when they decide to get it on, and every variation in between. And a person could find sex with other people super DNW but enjoy the hell out of masturbating. We don’t really have a standard word for people who REALLY REALLY ENJOY sex (or not a non-insulting one); people who don’t enjoy sex at all are called sex-repulsed.

Sexual drive: How often do you find yourself wanting to have sex or masturbate? 

For some people, ALL THE TIME, for some people, never. For MOST people, this varies with hormonal shifts/age/psychological and emotional factors, etc. And again this is separate from who you are attracted to, separate from whether you act on those urges (or choose to have sex in the absence of any physical urge), separate from how much you enjoy engaging in sexual activity if/when you do. This is the one that people are thinking of when they ask if your asexuality is being caused by your meds/thyroid/whatever. But again, having zero libido could happen to somebody who’s actively attracted to all kinds of people, and having a constant urge to get busy could happen to someone who’s not attracted to anyone–even to someone who’s not attracted to anyone and is sex-repulsed, etc.

SO IN CONCLUSION: sexual identity is complicated! Sexual behavior is driven by lots of factors! But if you’re not attracted to anyone, the word for that is asexual, and there’s no wrong way to be asexual. You just are if you are.

nicegoth reblogged your photoset "Nocturnal/Diurnal - Unfired" and added:

this is so neat

Thank you so much! (◕‿◕✿) And that reminds me - I've had these back from the kiln awhile now. It's time I properly photographed them fired, isn't it? In the meantime, here's a quick preview snap:

"Bravery Courage Happiness Slurpee”

- The Asexual Motto

Coming out as LGB+ has nothing to do with sex, it’s ridiculous when straight people reply to someone coming out with something like “I don’t care what you do behind closed doors/in the bedroom” because all that does is contribute to the hypersexualization of LGB+ folks and the implication that being LGB+ is for adults only and it’s dirty and wrong and shameful. Being LGB+ isn’t NSFW and someone talking about the fact that they’re LGB+ or mentioning their partner is not taboo, it’s normal and it needs to be normalized.

Thank you for answering this so thoroughly! Your response was fascinating. Little Simra poring over charcoal glyphs scratched over the hearth is one of my favorite bits of imagery so far. But most of all I relished the chance to learn more about Simra’s mother. As with Soraya, her presence is felt more immediately through her impact on Simra and his father than through the rare glimpses we get of who she was otherwise - for me, the effect is reminiscent of the feeling you get craning your neck to see something through a barred window or the slats of a fence. What details you do manage to pick out are all the more vivid for the strain of searching. For instance, I remember returning again and again in my mind for days after I’d read it to the image of a soft leather jacket left behind with Verru (unfinished?) after her death, that she’d intended as a wedding gift for Soraya.

I have to confess, though, about an hour after I sent my question off I suddenly remembered that I already knew that Simra’s parents were literate - he writes them both at least once, doesn’t he? And the letters for his father are couched in a rather touchingly careful Dunmeris, even. So I felt like a huge dork all morning. (⌒_⌒;) Guess I should have slept on it instead of rolling out of bed in the middle of the night to ask, huh?

If I remember correctly, most Ashlanders are illiterate, forgoing a written tradition in favor of an oral one. Assuming that Simra's parents follow convention in this, then how did Simra come by his letters? And what does Simra's mother in particular, as a former wisewoman-in-training, think of his unorthodox affinity for the written word?

[This is a very good question. Mostly because it does something my favourite questions do. It asks something for which I don’t already have an answer. But it asks something that needed to be asked. It’s something useful to me. So already, thanks for that.Simra’s parents were travellers of Ashlander extraction. They didn’t spend all their time with the Zainab. So yes, while they were raised within and each participated within an oral tradition - particularly on the part of Ishar, his mother - they were literate to one degree or another.It was actually Ishar, rather than Simra’s father, who was the better linguist, reader, and writer. His father never learnt more than a few things outside of Dunmeris. Her background gave her more of a respect for knowledge, however the knowers store it and keep it known, orally or literarily.Bringing up her children in Skyrim, it was she that educated them in mixed Tamrielic and Dunmeris: reading, writing, arithmetic, bits and pieces of history, theology. She would not have her children go without the skills that they’d need to live as something other than Ashlanders.Admittedly, young Simra paid more attention than Soraya. This learning did not come from reading, however, but through listening. Even Simra’s literacy comes from watching his mother scratch letters and words in charcoal above their fireplace. And the oral nature of these lessons is perhaps part of the reason Simra has such a good verbal memory.In short, Simra’s no Zainab. He’s Dunmer, and part of Morrowind’s diaspora. He’s of Zainab blood, raised by parents who were raised Zainab. He himself admits that he’s a Dunmer of Skyrim, however — inheritor of some Ashlander traditions, but barred off from others, and proud of both.So he’s an unorthodox Dunmer in one sense. But he was raised by an unorthodox womer, after all — why d’you think she didn’t ever become a full-fledged wisewoman? For the most part it was Ishar who refused to acclimatise to this new place and new culture, his heart living with his wife and children, but belonging back in the Grazelands.]

Something strange is going on with the way we talk about feelings. Emotional responses are mocked in some but honored in others. The same people deride millennials and their “safe spaces” where feelings are never hurt, and then fall back on the refrain that “I just feel more secure when I have a gun.” Feelings, it seems, are either a laughable distraction or a crucial decision-making element, depending on who’s having them. The need to feel safe, in particular, is often treated as childish and absurd—but only when coming from people who have actual reason to feel vulnerable. Asking to be recognized as your true gender? It’s all in your head. Asking for accommodations for illness and disability? You’re too sensitive. Recounting experiences of dehumanization because of your race or gender? What an overreaction. But those who want to make the country “safer” by securing the borders against people they perceive as outsiders are never painted as whiners or cowards. The police officers killing unarmed folks in a moment of panic are not mocked for failing to keep their feelings in check. When someone wants a deadly weapon, their desire to feel safe becomes a rugged and real and sexy conviction.

Stop Treating Emotions Like Character Flaws Of The Powerless - The Establishment

(via k-ee-t)

Tagged by: @nicegoth Tagging:

Name: URL: carletoncolton Nicknames: Jack Birthday: April 25th Gender: Cisgender female Sexual orientation: Panromantic demisexual Height: 5' 4½" Favorite color: Grey Time and date at the moment: 7:44 AM 9/3/2016 Average hours of sleep: Oh, well... if I'm honest it ranges from around seven to thirteen. If you called me a laggard/layabout/loafer I'd have no grounds from which to argue the point. Last thing I Googled: This emoticon: ( ಥ‿ಥ) No comment. One place that makes me happy: Aji Ten. As my family's habitual choice of restaurant for birthday dinners and the like, practically every corner of it's overlaid with the easiest kind of memories, the ones that are all tea and conversation. That, and there's an autographed photo of George Takei underneath their television over which he's scrawled that their food is "galactically delicious". How many blankets I sleep under: Would you believe that I've been blogging in mild apprehension of someone posing this exact question since my first ask meme? And that I've never managed to handwave my way past the presentiment, however unlikely it seemed? Well... it's twenty-four, and I'd have more if I could. As many as I could buy, beg, borrow, filch, abscond with, or outright steal. Altogether they're literally too heavy to sit up under, so I have to lift up one edge of the stack and sort of slither out of bed every morning like a trapdoor spider. All I have to say for myself is that I moved to Michigan from southern Georgia and if I ever get used to the cold then I'm a Dutchman's uncle.