Shades Of A 120
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“I wanted you to see what you were missing” – really? O_o
And here I thought only Anwar was being a prick somehow, if inadvertently.
I must admit, you do somewhat capture the whole “people being shitty and thus somehow deserving each other” part of 50 Shades of Grey.
I didn’t see this nearly as negatively as you did, Pyr. JD is being honest and open. They’re hurt, and they are sharing how they feel. If that’s how they felt, that is how they felt. Wounded people act differently than logical people. I think anyone would act like this, even if they didn’t admit the reason. It’s an insecurity and love thing–love makes you hurt each other sometimes. Idk, I’m not explaining this well, but yeah.
Hurt feelings may explain deliberately cruel behavior, but doesn’t give you a free pass to be a spiteful jerk. A greater act of love would be for them to part ways so they don’t hurt each other like this anymore. But they don’t want to give up on what had been so nice, and therein lies the tragedy.
That sounded a lot more philosophical than I intended.
There’s a massive difference between being an ass on purpose, and by accident. We all- ALL, bar nobody- do things which are or were not the best or right thing to do, and the overwhelming majority won’t learn as much as they could or should from the experience either. That’s a part of being a person, and it doesn’t make you a bad one, otherwise we’d all be pretty terrible people.
People somehow expect fictional characters to be perfect, to do or say the right thing, but real people aren’t like that in the slightest.
As for JD, they are being honest and open, probably mainly to get it off their chest and partly to clear the air and try to find a way away from what’s bogging them down. Those are all pretty damn good reasons for saying what they are.
Two really insecure people who can’t figure things out, fkdjghfk. I’ve been there. This page actually makes me feel bad for both of them. JD’s previous comments tell a lot about how they worry about what others think of them. Just trying to be yourself in a world that’s not keen on letting a person be happy unless it’s up to their standards…Ugh. Wanting to feel wanted is a shitty feeling.
And with Anwar putting his foot in his mouth, though I feel for him, too. Guy clearly does care, he just doesn’t know how to properly express it. You end up saying a lot of stupid things when you’re all messed up inside like that.
I actually like this page a lot. It’s a rough conversation to have, and I like seeing it finally happen between these two.
I agree.
What I especially like about this page though is how it shows how heavily relationships rely on respect and communication; it shows that both are capable of mistakes and sefishness and disrespect (both in being unable to unable to accept the other’s sexuality). IMO, it makes them both a bit more relateable for me (whereas before it seemed so very one-sided against Anwar, despite probably having deserved it for his behavior).
I also really like this page. Especially so for finally reaching the point of conversation. It’ll be sad if they end up not speaking anymore or going separate ways…but it’s better than constantly hurting one another otherwise.
OK, I try REALLY hard not to judge the characters, and to let them grow at their own pace, because I trust Tab’s storytelling.
But… JD made an intentional CHOICE to have kinky sex in front of their good friend, who’s also an ex, who only ended the relationship because of the sexual incompatibility?
The base scenario (kinkster/ace exes keeping friendship) is WAY too familiar, and if my ex pulled that crap on me… only extreme self-control would keep the rage-storm from leading to a 10×10 room with no privacy and no right to leave for many years (if ever).
I know! No one in the comments seems to be talking about how hurtful JD’s actions were. They have no right to do that, it is just totally inexcusable. It’s completely manipulative, bitter, shallow, childish, disrespectful, and just so maany things I’m so mad, why isn’t war mad.
Up until now the writing has been really realistic. Like, I don’t know War like Tab does but if anyone admitted to War what JD said, I don’t think their first reaction would be to try to be calm and say they care about them. They would be so hurt. even if they wanted to prove to the person they wanted them after someone said that, there would still be a big initial shock. No matter how much you care for someone, if someone says “I know sex is a trigger for you and I wanted to have hardcore sex with someone infront of you to show you that people have hardcore sex with me” that person isn’t going to take it so easily. God, what the hell JD, for christ sake…
Yep. JD’s actions are some nasty manipulative acephobic shit and this is scene really speaks amazingly for either Anwar’s lack of self-esteem or his amazing self-control.
I think it’s fairly realistic. In the moment it’s 50/50 whether I would explode at someone “you just accused me of being the bad one when you did that on purpose!?” and being sort of so flummoxed by it that I moved along.
I had something happen to me along those lines with a family member once saying something really hurtful, but it was in line with what society at large says, and so it took me a day to process that yeah, that was fucked up, because it just felt like more background noise at the time like “oh, yes I suppose that is…something….that a….person would say???”
I think people respond differently when they are feeling really guilty and Anwar does has a lot to feel guilty about in regards to JD. Guilt about the how their relationship went, guilt about the way he dumped them, guilt about showing up in the dungeon they go to without warning them.
It is important to keep in mind that Anwar did show up to the place where he knows his ex engages in public sexual activities. Yes it was a spiteful thing to do, but Anwar unthinkingly invaded JD sexual space. It forced JD to choose between leaving their community space, not carrying out the plans they had previously made with others, or carrying on in front of Anwar. That is a bad position to put someone in. It seems like Anwar probably triggered something in JD by showing up and triggered people don’t always make the best decisions. I can definitely see a line of emotional logic which says, “If Anwar shows up to my sex space that he knows I frequent, then he has to deal with what I’m doing in my community sex space. I’m not going to let him push me out of the important, meaningful community space that I have claimed for myself.” Sometimes the deliberately hurtful/spiteful part of it only becomes conscious afterwards, especially when someone is in pain.
A better thing to do would have been for them both to talk about it and come up with a compromise like JD waiting to do the scene and Anwar leaving. Or JD leaving this time but Anwar agreeing not to show up next week. Anwar’s presence preventing JD from doing any public kink scenes would be a very controlling thing where Anwar basically has control of JD’s sex life within this community space simply by showing up to it. That isn’t cool. This can’t all rest on JD, even if the spite in their choice is their responsibility.
Also, the tone of voice a person has when admitting to something like that has a huge impact. If the vocal tone says, “I feel like crap for having done that,” it can significantly change how a person reacts.
I definitely agree that since Anwar showed up at the club, where he knows JD goes (and probably knows JD does public kink stuff), him seeing JD in a scene can’t be entirely said to be JD’s fault. However, I feel like you are leaving out the fact that JD had the alternative of using a private dungeon. Yes, perhaps they would have preferred to use the public, community space, but they probably could have been happy using the private one just this once. Also, JD’s comment does not hint at JD choosing to use the public dungeon because they preferred to be in the community area. JD’s comment makes it sound like the main reason they chose to use the public area was to shove their kinky relations with other people in Anwar’s face in a way. They wanted to show Anwar that other people like having sex (?…I’m still unclear about whether sex happened)/doing kink stuff with them and that he was missing out. And for me, I think that’s where the real problem lies.
I do feel that this was definitely a huge dick move on JD’s part. I also feel that since Anwar clearly didn’t get a pass earlier for breaking up with JD like he did (partially due to not yet understanding his own asexuality), JD should not get a pass here for clearly choosing to do something that was intended to produce a negative reaction in Anwar (regardless of how fueled it might have been by their unresolved feelings towards Anwar and the breakup).
Overall, I’d say JD still does not seem to really understand Anwar’s asexuality. Their comment makes it sound like they think Anwar’s lack of desire to have sex is a personal choice or that he chose it to spite JD. At the very least, JD seems to think that Anwar could somehow be made to feel jealous of missing out on the sexual/kinky activity itself. It sounds like JD also didn’t realize Anwar still had feelings for them, which further complicated the matter. I’d say in some ways Anwar is also pretty ignorant of JD’s sexuality, though perhaps less so because, as we have seen in the story, JD has talked about their sexuality somewhat openly/explicitly in front of him.
I think these two really need to devote at least part of this conversation to really understanding the other’s sexual orientation and finally learning to respect it. Anwar needs to be mindful of the rejection JD feels by overall society and the words he uses to refer to their interests in kink, as well as the problems his presence at the kink club cause for JD. At the same time, JD needs to understand and accept that asexual is a sexual orientation, that it isn’t something Anwar chose or can control (and that it’s normal!), and that it is not okay to throw kink or sex in his face when he has clearly expressed not wanting to see or hear about it. Perhaps after such a conversation each would know how to avoid triggering the other (which is something both seem to have been doing a lot recently).
Ohgosh, thank you. I mentioned in a previous post of mine that I did agree that Anwar was the instigator of his own problems, but in this case JD is the instigator of THEIR problem. They both made mistakes, inexcusable ones (someone’s past poor experiences/abuse/insecurities/etcetera *explains* their poor treatment of others, it doesn’t excuse it), and it’s important to recognize that fact on BOTH ends of this exchange. Tolerance comes in many forms, and in this case, JD favored spite instead.
Can I mention here that JD had no idea Anwar would be there?
Guilt about showing up to the dungeon that they go to without warning them????
UM. JD ASKED ‘war to attend. That was the first time they had gone, and JD doesn’t get to claim spaces as theirs. Isn’t it just as impolite for JD to not have given Anwar notice since it was clear that Anwar had ALSO made connections there?
Not to mention that JD has explicitly stated that it wasn’t what you have hypothesized as the line of thinking. It was explicitly “I’m going to do this in front of Anwar to make him jealous, because I am still hurt that he doesn’t want me sexually in the way I want him, and I don’t realize that it won’t make him jealous, just uncomfortable, despite having had talks about his asexuality”
And hey, I GET feeling rejected because someone doesn’t want you sexually like you want them, including with someone who is asexual and you may know intellectually that it isn’t about you, but emotionally it feels about you. You know what I don’t get? Then trying to hurt the other person.
Also (sorry sorry). I agree that Anwar has a lot of guilty *feelings* about JD, but I disagree entirely that Anwar has a lot “to” feel guilty “about”. The one and only thing that Anwar did that I feel has a valid guilt attached to it is not listening in the moment of the breakup.
The breakup, attending the space that JD INVITED him to with a different person (a space which no, JD had NOT participated in a sexual way in before, at least in text, last time was just to meet some potential subs), trying to move on with his romantic life (JD only went to the club the first time to meet with other potential sexual partners, and wanted back up, AND we know that JD has dated at least one other time since the break up, while we have no in text evidence to support that Anwar did). None of those are worthy of us as spectators assigning guilt. Nope.
This is getting SO deep! I like where this is going!
Finally! An honest conversation between these two. Glorious.
I second this! But, what about Chris??? **worried Chris is going to end up being hurt**
I had the same thought. I know I can’t be the only one to have ever used one relationship to get over another one, but when you find out that the other person still has feeling for you as well? In my experience it’s hard to NOT try to get back together, and it always leaves that other person feeling hurt and used.
It seems to me that Anwar does have feelings for Chris, and as much as some people say it shouldn’t, that kind of overlap happens a lot. But it makes things hard all the way around. No mater what Anwar does, someone will end up hurt, and because he likes both of them, it will most likely make him feel like shit for having to do so. The question then becomes, how does that effect his relationship with whoever he chooses to be with?
I dunno, as unlikely as it probably is, I kind of like what some others here have suggested previously- Anwar having a romantic relationship with both JD and Chris. Poly relationships aren’t exclusive to verisexual people. That said, I do think that scenario is pretty unlikely and I’m not sure that JD and Anwar would ever work out as a couple after all they’ve been through together (and, at times, what they’ve been through because of each other). So I do agree with what Xasswuwe said (below).
Nah, these two will never work romantically anyway- too many toxic patterns. So Chris will be fine in the end. :)
I just wish these two could have made it work together somehow, without also having to give up parts of themselves. This is heartbreaking.
Some form of polygamy would work- Anwar has a polygamous relationship of sorts now, where Chris gets his affection and goes elsewhere with Anwar’s blessing for the things their relationship cannot provide. In theory, they could all be sharey.
In practice jealousy and a lack of balance between the different partners makes it so much harder than I make it sound. I’m fairly sure that’s not a direction this will go in either (but I never rule stuff out with Tab!)
Polyamory will not fix abuse and fucked up assholishness. The reasons that JD and Anwar should not be together are myriad and have nothing at all to do with their sexualities, gender identities, romantic feelings, or abilities to do poly.
Some people just can’t help being horrible to each other and thus should stay far far away from each other.
Yeah, some form of poly* similar to what Anwar and Chris are doing now is what I was thinking of too, but they both have a lot of growing up to do before either of them would potentially be stable like that – they’d need to learn to communicate, both would have to learn to be wholly accepting of the other, etc. I really don’t expect them to end up back together (thus the past tense in my post), seems to me that ship has sailed and there’s too much hurt there even after they’ve done their growing up.
In reply to Cerberus – I don’t think Jason was implying that simple polyamory or any of the such would be some magic cure for their relationship, but rather that it could have been an option AFTER they had matured, figured things out, and dealt with a lot of their issues. I think it’s too far gone for that.
I guess I should add to this – when I say “I wish they could’ve worked it out,” I meant “I wish they had figured out their communication problems way back when and done something about it then.” I don’t magically want them to just get back together after all the hurt that’s happened here.
This is probably one of my favourite pages so far. The honesty leaping off the page just punched me right in the feels.
Good for you, JD. Shitty thing to do, but you know it and you admit it.
Both of you… keep going.
JD wasn’t having sex in front of Anwar.
That was what I was thinking as well. We saw JD in a scene with their subs, but I don’t remember any sex? This page seems to indicate that JD is still hurt from Anwar’s harsh break up. Intentionally choosing to have the scene in full view of Anwar was crappy, but since they didn’t know Anwar was going to be at the club it probably wasn’t premeditated. I wonder if seeing Anwar with Chris in his outfit (and obviously okay with Chris’ kink) triggered JD’s actions.
Indeed. It’s the standard movie trope: boy breaks up with girl, girl hears boy is going to be at the party tonight with a fab new girlfriend, girl and her equally cookie-cutter friends get her glammed to hell and back so she can “show him”. Outside of bland chick flick characters, the reaction remains true, that when you feel the other person has chosen not-you, even if you don’t want them back now, the immediate panic-reaction is to flaunt how over it you are. Normally, in an ended-cause-one-stopped-caring thing, it’s fine, because the dumpee can flaunt away and feel good that they’re not seen to be pining or caring one jot, and the dumper doesn’t give a fig, or at least is relieved to see their ex coping. When both still want in, but acknowledge it can never work, then it’s just picking at the scab, although the intention is no more evil that li’l miss romcom and her girlies.
But then JD says in text that it WAS premeditated, they SAID they could have gone elsewhere but chose not to “but I wanted you to see what you were missing”. How are people ignoring this? Why is everyone so willing to overlook JD’s crappy behavior but nitpick Anwar’s?
Even though we saw no genital action, obviously Anwar and JD both interpreted the scene as being sexual. :p
Oh yay, now they’re both complete assholes.
Clarification: How long has it been since the birthday flashback and now? Also I am assuming JD and Anwar have had some long talks about Anwars sexuality but is it possible that JD, as a thoroughly sexual being, doesn’t get Anwar’s ace-ness? Somewhere deep down? That might explain, in part, their behavior. A kind of spiteful revenge/don’t you want a piece of this display that was meant to awaken some jealous lust?
I only say this because when I had my first gay friend way back in high school, I accepted him superficially but (not so) deep down I didn’t quite believe it so I would manufacture hetero situations for him as a away to “enlighten” him to what he was missing. I have since learned (and thoroughly apologized) for the error of my ways BUT is it possible JD is going through something similar?
This is exactly what I was thinking! That on some level JD doesn’t really get what it means when Anwar says he’s asexual. I think this misunderstanding may be behind a lot of JD’s assumptions, choices, and behaviors in regards to Anwar (like doing a kink scene purposefully in front of him when a private dungeon was an option or quickly assuming that his desire to not see sex in front of him means he is “sex negative”).
Yep, this is very much what it sounds like from the text.
I also note that A LOT of the people here are seeming to side exclusively with JD in matters relating to all this relationship stuff, and wonder if many of them don’t have some major unpacking to do of their own regarding acceptance of asexualities.
Okay, my biggest gripe about all of this is how everyone was ALL over Anwar for “not telling the truth about being asexual” which echos a lot of discriminatory views that because Anwar, who didn’t understand being asexual was actually a thing didn’t tell JD “by the way I don’t care for sex” because he hadn’t figured it out, he is an asshole in the eyes of quite a few people because he didn’t know how to handle is past and current confusion and didn’t “tell the truth”. I guess the assumption is that because he lives in a sexual world he should just learn to deal with it, and disclose because he somehow owes that to JD despite not KNOWING for himself, which is problematic. I don’t condone the behaviour he had, but to me, his silence on being Asexual is much like a gay man from a conservative family trying to be with women thinking that the problem is he just hasn’t found the right one yet: there’s a lot of misunderstanding of the self and the assumption that one is either not normal or just needs to find the person who can fix them. Still, everyone jumped the shark and thought Anwar was the world’s worst person.
This bugs me because Anwar’s actions were wrong, yes, but it came across that there was no malicious intent there — his insecurities, which were brought to a height by JD gifting him with sex resulted in him lashing out with the belief that he will be forever broken in the eyes of everyone else. What I find frustrating is right now, when JD admits to doing something for the sake of getting to Anwar and proving they are wanted by people other than him — an intention which is more malicious in nature — everyone is giving them sympathy and going “poor JD”? People, what the heck? They are BOTH in the wrong and were BOTH assholes to each other.
Thank you for this.
thank you!
Yeah, it’s worth noting just how vile JD’s actions are here. By deliberately trying to use sex with others as a weapon against an ex, they have not only crossed boundaries with their current partners (who I doubt would have appreciated their hot scene being weaponized against someone they barely knew), shown a nasty passive-aggressive streak, used their injured pride as an excuse to hurt another, and just been heartlessly cruel in convoluted fashion for no damn good or character consistent reason.
But in addition to all those messed up behaviors, they have also done something incredibly acephobic and immensely fucked up.
Because see, saying to an ace, oh, here’s this thing you can’t access because it is only for sexuals and you couldn’t give me that sexual attraction my ego craves is kind of like teasing a disabled person in a wheelchair for their inability to walk or a gay person for their inability to have “proper” (fuck that noise) straight relationships.
Cause, an asexual can’t help not feeling sexual attraction or failing to provide mutual chemistry. It’s physically impossible for them. And in our society where that ability is rated very highly especially with regards to forming “proper” (again, fuck that term) romantic relationships. Even if you’re an asexual who is comfortable preforming some sex stuff, it’s still something you just can’t provide and which a lot of society will judge a person for failing to deliver.
So for JD to be a complete fuck, knowing that Anwar is ace and furthermore knowing that Anwar was forcing his own consent a bit in their relationship because he thought that performing sexuality was critical to being a relationship, and just shove his face in the fact that mutual sexuality is not something he can share is just… no. So much no.
What JD did was pretty fucking horrible. And reinforces the kind of shit that had Anwar going home and ignoring his own boundaries to perform the kind of “normal” that JD was passive-aggressively telling him to be. That has real consequences on ace people and consent in a not good way.
And it’s additionally vile, because it makes their original “leaving the door open” statement in the bar to be a nasty bit of setup work for this little bit of slamming the door in his face entirely because of his sexuality. they schemed for months to get his hopes up, just to slam it shut in a way designed to cause him the most pain. That isn’t just fucked up, that’s abusively manipulatively fucked up. The kind of thing that serves as a major red flag (seriously Tab, it’s not great representation when you make the new flagship queer community characters into horrible fucking monsters. It just makes those groups look terrible, because of your previous works.)
Overall, we have Anwar is awful, JD is worse, and Chris might as well be queer Jesus.
I didn’t notice the setup until you pointed it out. That really does take JD’s shit-head level up a few notches and makes me want to (metaphorically) smack them upside the head so hard their grandparents feel it and tell them they’re being a terrible terrible shit-head toward their friend and their subs.
And I really, really hope Tab is going to take JD in a direction of “holy crap, I DID that. I need to stop, apologize profusely to Anwar and my subs, look at myself in a mirror, and look closely at my values, attitude, and self.” (That may take a bit, of course; they have a lot to work through.) Hopefully followed by positive personal growth and forcing themselves to stop and think about others’ feelings before acting, then deciding to do the RIGHT thing and not the shit-head thing.
I hope that made sense; it’s been a long day.
Also, do you accept hugs? Because I would like to give you a hug for “Chris might as well be queer Jesus.” That line made me giggle and my whole day felt much less crappy in retrospect, for some reason.
I don’t see JD as deliberately setting Anwar up, as much as making bad (and spiteful) decisions when hurt (and having mixed feeling about still wanting to be with Anwar). It was a very very bad thing to do that really hit Anwar’s triggers (and not fair to the sub), but I see JD mostly acting out of pain. That doesn’t excuse anything, but it is important. Anwar invaded JD’s sexual community space, and while that doesn’t take responsibility away from JD, it does seem like JD was very affected by that. JD already had plans for a public scene. Anwar went to a place where people have public sex and that he knows JD frequents. And he could have left when he saw JD there with a kink partner. He didn’t. Lot’s of better decisions could have been made on both sides. A negotiation between them should have happened. Neither initiated it. JD did not follow after Anwar to “show him what he was missing,” but engaged in sexual activity in a public sex space. In fact, JD seemed surprised to see Anwar there and was hurt enough to make a spiteful decision about carrying on with previous plans.
Regardless of all of the bad decisions, the answer to this is not JD can’t engage in public kink every time Anwar spontaneously shows up to public kink events. There are ways to share space respectfully, but that has to be on both of them. Otherwise, Anwar is given control over JD sex life by simply being present in a public sex space. That is not okay either.
Not to hammer at you, but why are you automatically assuming this counts as JD’s space. In text it is made clear that JD and Anwar go for the first time for BOTH of them together. At the event Anwar meets someone that JD then expressly tries to push him towards. Isn’t it fair to then say that it is equally Anwar’s space?
I also don’t think we have any in text indication that JD has gone more times since then. At least with timing, it seemed like the second time for Anwar was within a fairly short period of time, and we are also made aware in text that this is not a devoted kink club, but only occasionally, as such it’s entirely possible that this is also JD’s second time. (If I’m wrong about whether there is in text evidence that it has either been a long time after OR that JD has “claimed” the space or been going since then I would be interested in having the pages pointed out to me).
Sorry, I’ve been attempting to find the “leaving the door open” statement (that JD made?) you mentioned and I haven’t had any success. I’m not sure what you are referring to. Could you point me to a page number or scene?
Honestly I don’t blame Tab for this all. It feels like there is ample in-text information in order to recognize that what JD has been doing is fucked up (and that what Anwar did was hurtful). While the narration is in first person and thus unreliable, we also see facial expressions (for those who see), which allow us as readers a peek behind the curtain, so to speak to understand what everyone is really feeling.
It’s the choice of the readers who seem to primarily blame Anwar for all relationship woes, who literally are coming up in the comments here with hypothetical explanations for JD’s behavior that are ignoring that JD has *actually* said about why they did what they did (“maybe they didn’t mean to be hurtful, even though they explicitly acknowledge it as such in the text” is pretty impressive use of selective hearing/seeing/perceiving).
I also (as a queer, trans/non binary, and kinky guy) don’t feel particularly annoyed or upset at Tab’s portrayal of JD. I’m not speaking for others, but I don’t feel like the actual character of JD is a problem for any of my communities. JD feels like a giant jerk to me, but they also feel like a *realistic* giant jerk to me. I’ll take realistic depictions of giant jerks any day from community members, and those who have previously shown commitment to showing diversity of our communities.
I agree with a lot of the excellent points here. I just wanted to bring this up simply because I saw one character being villianized for poor decisions and the other character getting sympathy for, what is in my eyes equally a poor decisions. There is a lot of grey area to the entire situation, but there are some facts here that are supported: 1) JD knows something is going on with Anwar and Chris 2) JD knows Chris is involved in the kink scene
Those two facts bring me to a third: It could be reasonable to say that Anwar may at times decide to attend the Kink group out of support for Chris. But this is just a hypothesis of mine.
What is fact though is this: JD knew Anwar is there (it’s supported by the dialogue) — and yes, triggers are ultimately the individual in question’s responsibility to work through (though people should try to be supportive). I’m not saying JD minding their own business would have been wrong. I’m saying the REASONS that JD continued with their scene was utterly toxic, thus by extension making their actions rather toxic as well. They were essentially using their partners to “make a point” to Anwar and yet very few people latched on to this, while Anwar’s problematic behaviour got PAGES of comments.
Both have acted in rather toxic matters. Very problematic, and this needs to be discussed, instead of heaping this all on Anwar like many people have in previous pages due to him being Ace.
yep. with you 100% I would be fine with us all talking about how communication broke down in the relationship on BOTH sides (yes, Anwar could have communicated much better). Instead what I generally see is some weird consensus that Anwar was a bad person for breaking up with someone who had been constantly wanting to have sex, when he doesn’t enjoy sex, or for saying that he felt JD only wanted him for sex, when ummm JD’s entire character as presented to us IS about sex, so I can understand that feeling entirely. And then since then everything is apparently Anwar’s fault.
I’ll acknowledge that Anwar communicates poorly once everyone else acknowledges that JD does too, that JD DID put pressure in the relationship on Anwar to be sexual (without having checked in in-text to make sure it was actually desired, yeah yeah we hear Anwar say he “lied” but we never actually SEE him lie, and he has crappy enough self-confidence that I hear that mostly as him blaming himself for “lying” by not speaking up, which isn’t a lie, bad communication? yes, lie? no), that JD clearly doesn’t actually respect Anwar’s asexuality, and that JD repeatedly and PURPOSEFULLY puts Anwar in situations that they know Anwar will find uncomfortable.
I think that the deliberate nastiness of JD’s choice is distracting us from a very important conversation about boundaries, consent, and triggers. Putting the intentional aspect of it aside, here are some things to ponder:
1) By choosing to go to a public play space Anwar has tacitly consented to seeing sexual activity (and he knew, or should have remembered, that JD was likely to be there). In those spaces people may see scenes that disturb them for a variety of reasons. If that happens, the person who is upset is the one who takes it upon themselves to leave and care for themselves. It can be argued that by staying there after knowing JD was there, Anwar had given a kind of consent to seeing JD engaging in public sexual activity.
2) At a certain point people become responsible for managing their own triggers. It is not fair (or realistic) for someone to expect everyone in the world to shape their lives around not triggering them. The other extreme of someone deliberately triggering them is also not okay. In between these extremes is a murky area.
3) Showing to a community space where you know an ex will be and ex will be and doing sexual things can be a seriously nasty (and abusive) tactic. At the same time, showing up to a community space where you know an ex is so that they can’t comfortably engage with new partners or have to leave that space is also a nasty (and commonly used) abusive tactic. While neither party knew the other would be there, it is important to realize that both sides of this situation can be used in a manipulative way and can be very triggering (even when completely accidental). When both sides can be used abusively, where is the healthy boundaries middle ground?
I suppose with number 3 though, is that in all fairness there was a very small likelihood of Anwar being there. Anwar knew that JD frequents the club, but JD didn’t know that Anwar would ever go there without them…
I agree with a lot of the excellent points here. I just wanted to bring this up simply because I saw one character being villianized for poor decisions and the other character getting sympathy for, what is in my eyes equally a poor decisions. There is a lot of grey area to the entire situation, but there are some facts here that are supported: 1) JD knows something is going on with Anwar and Chris 2) JD knows Chris is involved in the kink scene
Those two facts bring me to a third: It could be reasonable to say that Anwar may at times decide to attend the Kink group out of support for Chris. But this is just a hypothesis of mine.
What is fact though is this: JD knew Anwar is there (it’s supported by the dialogue) — and yes, triggers are ultimately the individual in question’s responsibility to work through (though people should try to be supportive). I’m not saying JD minding their own business would have been wrong. I’m saying the REASONS that JD continued with their scene was utterly toxic, thus by extension making their actions rather toxic as well. They were essentially using their partners to “make a point” to Anwar and yet very few people latched on to this, while Anwar’s problematic behaviour got PAGES of comments.
Both have acted in rather toxic matters. Very problematic, and this needs to be discussed, instead of heaping this all on Anwar like many people have in previous pages due to him being Ace.
but (as to your point 1, I’ve already covered elsewhere in the thread your other 2 points) he DID take ownership of the fact that it made him uncomfortable. Anwar literally started the conversation saying “I think I’ll stop going” for exactly that reason. But then JD went on the offensive.
At no point has Anwar in-text blamed JD for what happened that night. But as readers we are certainly free to blame JD for doing something that they EXPLICITLY stated was intended to make Anwar feel uncomfortable.
Like, it would just be a shitty thing that happened IF JD hadn’t done it on purpose, and IF JD hadn’t (upon being told: “so… I think I’ll stop attending”) start attacking Anwar for having been there in the first place. But that wasn’t what happened. What happened was that JD DID do it on purpose, and HAS been blaming Anwar for this, and that it was a public space, which Anwar had as much of a right to attend as JD did.
oh oops, needed the end to that:
SO, it wasn’t “just” a shitty situation that no on could have controlled. It was one that was purposefully manufactured by someone who didn’t have any special right to the space, who then later gets defensive/attacking when not EVEN called on it by Anwar. So no, I don’t agree that we are being “distracted” from the boundary issues. Because there were none. Anwar did nothing wrong in attending OR in feeling uncomfortable. If he had angrily demanded that JD stop immediately, leave, or had in this conversation done that, there WOULD be boundary issues, but Anwar simply attending? Nope. Not a single boundary issue.
So. is there any relation between Anwar’s awkwardness and insecurities and his religion? Or is this comic not gonna go there?
Whoops. Think I double posted. Sorry folks.