garden in the void

i have been on tumblr since 2018, and only now did i decide to make a pinned post! i'll most likely add to it gradually.

my attitude for this blog has been that of a small creature collecting shiny things. it's mostly just reblogs of everything i like or find important.

my ponysona, garden glow, drawn by @vixi-art-2000, their twitter here

my fursona, also by my friend vi (full art here),+ some moodboards made for me (the one on the right is by @loser-pet)

some info about me, this blog's tag system, and my boundaries are under read more

i just don't think the only interesting way to write a character who's celibate and then has freaky gay sex with a different character is to make him super repressed. i mean like it's cool if that's what ur into! it's fun to read about. but as a certified asexual i am very interested in the concept of jud committing to priesthood in small part to lend legitimacy and respectability to an already gaping absence where society said desire was supposed to be. which is a little self-serving, but understandable. it's also a kind of escape, because then he wouldn't have to contend with figuring himself out. and do i believe there is shame there? well, it's jud, so obviously yes. but i think a character (or a person) can simultaneously display shame and avoidance around their sexuality, and genuinely be outside the allosexual norm. actually, those things can majorly feed each other.

he conspicuously does not have any kind of canon sexuality, so we can get funky with it! what do we have to go off of, though? the way he reacts to displays of sexuality in the movie is so uncomfortable (and you know it's not on moral grounds because he's also uncomfortable with grace being slutshamed). the idea of wicks clocking that discomfort, not understanding where it comes from, but immediately exploiting it as much as possible... ough......

i would have a very tough time believing jud has had no sexual experience or even no sexual experience with men. my guy has likely spent a bunch of time in prison. the sex worker reading is also not lost on me. i just also think it would make sense if he came out of those experiences and thought "ok so that was hollow and at best awkward and at worst traumatic and men are mainly terrible so i guess i am just super straight deep down" and he missed the deeper disconnect.

and then blanc came around and fucked his shit up and gave him like four identity crises simultaneously. which is in itself fun and dramatic and makes for a nice symmetry with how he affects blanc. but their whole dynamic also slots very neatly into the demi reading, because... blanc is the only person we see who can make him feel that safe. he's the only person whose touch jud doesn't flinch away from. and obviously there are multiple things happening in conjunction here, trauma and everything, but it's consistent.

and the thing about being aspec and finding someone you're genuinely attracted to is that - by virtue of it being rare, and also by virtue of it being conditional, if we're going with demi specifically - it often feels like a revelation. it's overwhelming. you love and hate it simultaneously and you have no fucking clue what to do about it other than describe it in religious metaphor. which is exactly what jud ends up doing when i try to write him.