Sin dialogo

Hand holding. That's all it fucking took.

So catch me at Pride in a leather harness and holding a bat, because if hand holding is all it takes, we owe it to each other to stand together.

Hello! My name's Alanna and I'm the lead editor of LOVE UNLIMITED, Marvel Unlimited's romance comic line. This week we finished a story about Gwendolyn Poole, AKA Gwenpool, coming to the realization that she's aromantic and asexual--and though I usually prefer to let the stories speak for themselves, I wanted to talk a bit about this one.

There was basically no awareness of the asexual spectrum when I was growing up--I went through both high school and college secretly feeling like I was some kind of alien in a world that made no sense to me. Finding out that other people experienced the same thing, and that I wasn't weird or broken, was a big moment in my life.

I know how much it would have meant to me to see a character grappling with the same questions I was. I searched desperately for myself in stories as a kid even though I couldn't quite define what I was looking for yet. I'm so glad that there are more ace stories now, and honored that we were able to bring one more into the world.

I was inspired and emboldened to pitch this story by the work my friends Andrea Shea, Ro Stein and Ted Brandt did on Connor Hawke's story at DC, by Latoya Raveneau's ace advocacy within Disney, and by my erstwhile assistant editor and co-conspiritor Kaitlyn Lindtvedt, who, I discovered after a few months of working together, was also ace! We were helped and supported at every step by other aces at Marvel as well--there are more of us than you might think! It's also amazing that our EIC and Marvel greenlit this story and gave us the freedom to tell it the way we wanted.

I'm so grateful to @jeremywhitley, @bailiesartblog and Kelly Fitzpatrick for bringing this story to life. Working with an all-ace team has been so special--there's just something magic about knowing that even though our individual experiences differed, we had something fundamental and formative in common. There are pieces of all of us in this story, if you know where to look.

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/irs-complaint-process-tax-exempt-organizations

3. Nature of violation

Directors/Officers/Persons are using income/assets for personal gain

Organization is engaged in commercial, for-profit business activities

Income/Assets are being used to support illegal or terrorist activities

Organization is involved in a political campaign

Organization is engaged in excessive lobbying activities

Organization refused to disclose or provide a copy of Form 990

Organization failed to report employment, income or excise tax liability properly

Organization failed to file required federal tax returns and forms

Organization engaged in deceptive or improper fundraising practices

[ID: 6 nearly identical digital drawings featuring the artist’s upper half, a light-skinned bigender man/woman with straight medium hair, a stubble, duckbill hat and tie, waving a flag, with each image’s flag representing a different lgbt+ identity. The first 3 also include a simplistic, colored background with striations leading up to the artist, and words at the bottom which read “I HEART BEING (blank)”, each blank filled in with a respective identity. In the order of left to right, each identity represented by the flag and replacing the blank is: Asexual, Quoiromantic/ Greyromantic/ Aromantic, and Bigender. The bottom three follow the same order. End ID]

Sorry Aang, Zuko’s was cooler. Granted, that’s mostly because Zuko does things ten times more dramatically than everyone else. 

Aang on the other hand, just frickin’ tackles her.

The difference between a battle-hardened veteran with years of combat training… and a regular (if agile) dude who really just wants to save her from death by boulder by any means necessary.

It’s some really brilliant, subtle acting. We already know that the animators on this show are amazing, but this is a really good example of why. Not just the flawless rendering of what the characters are doing, but the careful consideration of how they do it.