u/GameboyAdvance32

I’ve seen a heck of a lotta discussion posts lately, which I like to see that for sure, but sometimes people’s responses seem a tad tense. I’d be curious to see y’all’s just direct thoughts, are there any particular issues you feel the community needs to improve on? Certain behavioral patterns you’ve noticed, negative attitudes, things of that nature. Speaking as a man myself I definitely feel as though I have a lot to work on, and I’d like both to improve how I interact with others and to see others improve as well, and I think that only really happens if people are free to discuss their grievances. So if y’all have any, I’d be happy to hear them in the comments.

Of course this will vary heavily by what RR means to you to begin with, but in that regard I’m happy to leave this question pretty open-ended. Just curious, there’s a lot of the big obvious things people bring up all the time like men being softer or more emotional or liking more homemaker roles, or women being more athletic or career-focused and stuff like that. I’m more curious about the smaller, more subtle things about someone that would really pique your interest in them, from both men and women. Small gestures or mannerisms they have, aspects of how they dress or talk, or little bits of their personality that just hit the right buttons for you. Little things that you feel most people don’t shed much light on or would think to bring up in RR circles that you find really attractive and overlooked. What are some of those subtle attractive aspects for you?

Perhaps I’m off base with this, but I feel as though there ain’t very much attention put onto the creative aspects of interior design, home decoration, etc. when it comes to RR men. As a man in that category myself, it’s really important to me. I LOVE decorating, deciding on color themes and overall styles for rooms, deciding what furniture pieces should go where, coming up with ideas to fill certain empty spaces while still feeling breathable and open, etc.

When I first moved out into an apartment with a friend and it was very barebones, things felt so wrong lol. We started out with the male living space stereotype of a TV on the floor, and that was the first thing I had to jump on, getting a nice TV stand. And me being me, if doesn’t just have to be functionally good, I care deeply about the aesthetic and how it matches the rest of the furniture in the room. There’s a sense in which my decoration style is a lot of grandma/grandpa energy and I kinda love it. I love creating a real home y’know, a place with warm and soft lighting, all sorts of cheesy and cute decorations, nice soft places to sit down, and all the amenities you could ever need. I just recently got a grandfather clock which I’m really loving, I’ve collected my fair share of paintings from antique stores and thrift shops, and I enjoy putting together a home space that really feels mine. I even got a good old-fashioned candy bowl in the living room, as God intended, and I have a deep affinity for vintage wooden furniture.

I think it’s both a way of expressing creativity in the ways you build around the layout you’re given, tackling issues, and having fun, and I also enjoy how it lets me express my care for others. Any friends I have over I wanna make sure feel comfortable and enjoy themselves and just about every furniture piece or little thing I buy, I consider how that affects their experience when staying over and if it can make it that much nicer. I dream of this one day being the warm and loving home my future wife can come home to, but I suppose that remains to be seen lol.

Curious if any of y’all feel similar, most men in my experience tend to not care very much about this sorta thing, and if they care their style tends to be a lot more simple and “modern masculine” than mine lol.

I was rewatching Unlucky Tug’s Season 14 retrospective and I got reminded of how amazing Kerry Shale’s Diesel voice was. He had such a range with the character and and he’s a rare example of a TTTE voice actor where in my mind he just IS the character, period. With the reboot Diesel’s face design I don’t think it’d match quite as well unfortunately, but still, his take on Diesel was so good I really hope he comes back to voice him. Plus I’ve always found it funny how you can tell he also voiced Larry in the Amazing World of Gumball lol.

Are there any previous voice actors (particularly from the CGI series though I reckon TATMR also counts), that you’d like to see return in the reboot?

I know the title is a tad vaguely worded but I hope it communicates the idea lol. I’m just curious, as at least speaking for myself, I find that the guy putting in extra effort into his appearance is a major part of RR in my mind. I very much try to be attractive and nice-looking to the best of my ability, both for myself and for any potential future partners, and frankly I think it’s just fun and a sort of self-expression that normative circles just don’t tend to appreciate. I’ll save my own preferences for a separate comment, but for now I’d like to hear from y’all how you like to go about that. What sort of things do you like to wear, and special steps in your skin or haircare routines to keep yourself in top condition, workouts to maintain certain features, etc? How do you feel these stylings represent who you are as a person, and do they factor into your RR dynamics or are they mere set dressing?

There’s an extent to which I find the importance of “who pursues who” to be a bit overstated, but I’d be lying if I said it DIDN’T play a part in my perception of RR overall. It happens quite rarely, but on the odd occasion that someone online (or even in person) actively pursues me romantically it’s incredibly flattering and exciting. Regardless of gender I still think it’s my job to put in effort to maintain communications, of course, but admittedly it feels so much better when I can tell a woman is excited to talk to me and wants to be the more “active” party. It’s nice to feel so aggressively wanted, and it also serves as a good first impression that the person in question is so bold.

All that personal rambling aside, I’d like to ask y’all on the other side of the fence, beyond just being attractive, are there any traits in particular that drives you to pursue someone you like? Like things that serve as good signs that he’d
take it well, or just that he’d be worth your time to begin with. And how often do you actually go for it? Is it a common occurrence, rare, or inbetween, and why?

As you can imagine this is primarily aimed at my fellow men though the question is open to anyone really, depending on how you choose to present.

Speaking for myself, I work an industrial job, so for my daily 9-5 it’s just totally impractical to dress how I’d like to ideally. Primarily for safety reasons as anything long, pretty, and dangly is just asking to drag you into any given Human Shredder 9000, but also just cause you’ll inevitably get covered in grime and soot anyways lol. Having laser hair removal has helped significantly in making facial hair grow slower, but it’s still best helped by having makeup applied that I just don’t have time for in the mornings, and this was far worse when I couldn’t afford that lol. Best I got on weekdays is wearing more pastels but beyond that I still look like a grungy blue collar worker……which I mean, I am, but that doesn’t mean I like it lmao.

Weekends can also be tough as I’m often hanging with family or friends, and so much as I love them, I don’t really feel the most comfortable whipping out the skirts and hair bows around them. To REALLY dress how I want nigh required a day to myself, alone at home, which I only get every so often. Aside from that it’s a lot harder to present how I’d like to ideally and the best I got are little signals in accessories or mannerisms.

This is hardly some major life issue, I can deal with presenting masc on a daily basis if that’s how it is and frankly there ARE things I could do to improve my daily looks, it’s just a matter of me having the energy to do so lol. Mostly just curious if any of y’all feel similar, like you‘d to dress up more but your daily life restricts your ability to do so.

Curious if there are any aspects in a man’s presentation, lifestyle, personality, etc that you find to be major green flags that you also don’t feel like get very much attention as such. While we’re on the topic, feel free to divulge any red flags that you also think often get looked over. I recognize the “flag” discussion can often turn into a bit of a black-and-white argument (especially on Reddit) but I trust people to be reasonable in the comments lol. These can be major factors or even very very small factors, just something that plays into your perception of someone as a potential RR partner that you don’t believe gets brought up as much as it ought to.

Perhaps some may consider this to be outside the purview of this subreddit, but I think it is quite relevant as, put bluntly, people don't exist in a vacuum. Of course this changes in extent from person to person, but by and large we are formed by and ultimately flourish in groups and community, raised by family, interacting with coworkers, hanging out with friends, etc, etc, and I really wish I saw more of these platonic relationships represented within a sort of RR framing, if that makes sense. As I often do, I'll simply list some examples of what I mean because I'm basic like that lol.

I would LOVE to see artwork, of mothers teaching their daughters how to fish, or cheering for them at baseball games. Women hanging out on each others' couches for big sports games and yelling at the TV, or talking to each other about the latest work they've done on their cars. Teenage boys giggling as they speak in hushed voices about their crushes, or doing each others' nails at a sleepover. Men coming together for the neighborhood book club to discuss horror and romance novels, or hosting craft clubs. Fathers talking to each other at the playground as they watch their kids, or women sat on the couch playing fighting games and getting really heated.

These are just a few basic examples that come to mind, and I'm sure there are plenty, PLENTY more that could be delved into. I feel like these would add a loooooottttt of texture both to people's creative works, and frankly to people's lives in general. I think it's a lot more difficult to be GNC and/or RR if you don't have "your boys" or "your girls" to hang out with, y'know? To develop those same-sex platonic bonds that most normative people get to develop to much greater extents due to shared experiences and interests. Speaking for myself, I have plenty of friends but they're all mostly normative people, so this side of myself is still quite lacking in company. So much as obviously I love depictions of one-on-one romance and quite understand why that's the dominant focus around here, man would I love to see more representation of the COMMUNITY within which these reversed roles operate, and within which platonic friendships and parenthood and other such relationships can be explored.

This is gonna be a bit of a messy ramble but eh, screw it, I'm bored lol. To be clear before I start on this, this is not meant to be a slight against anyone for not fitting what I'm personally looking for. Obviously that would be ridiculous and I hope I don't come off that way, this is just sorta me blabbering about my own feelings and experiences and you should take it all with a grain of salt.

Both when it comes to what I see in media representation and my own experiences with women in RR circles, I always feel like my heart yearns for a certain "aggression" that I rarely see, if that makes any sense. Of course I'd hope that they're respectful people, but in demeanor IDK, it feels very rare that I meet someone who has that "spice" y'know. Weird point, I know, but I find gamer rage really attractive in a woman, like. If she's playing a video game and just has that moment of anger that really thickens that gruffness in her voice and brings out all the sailor mouth vocabulary, that's SUPER attractive in its own weird way. Or if she can just viscerally, yet casually describe her own romantic or sexual desires in the way that a lot of men I know do. Someone who's very active in her pursuit of a man she likes and isn't afraid to compliment him so long as he's receptive.

It's hard to describe but it feels like in a lot of RR artwork and such it's like the woman has a much "quieter" energy, if that makes sense. So often the adjectives I'd use to describe the women pictured are "suave" or "calm" or "gorgeous" or things of that nature, like she holds some sort of quiet power over her romantic interest, but I wish I saw stuff that was a lot more visceral. Shit-eating grins, intense rage, guttural laughs, those more intense emotions with masculine flair y'know?

And so far as meeting people goes, I know this is something I've touched on before in comments but it feels really difficult to find women who aren't like. For lack of a better term, "too nice" lol. Like I often find people in RR and GNC circles who, mind you, are very pleasant people! Friendly, smart, have varied interests, they're great people. But it feels so rare to find someone who really has that heavy, masculine energy in the way they present themselves. Like more often than not, when painting their image of an ideal relationship they still use a lot of flowery language and kinda paint it as this cute little fantasy when like. I know this is gonna sound stupid and it's because it probably is, but I guess due to my own personality it leaves me feeling more masculine than they are, which is a weird feeling lol and not one I find very exciting. I'm CERTAINLY not a hot ticket item, but it would be nice to see more women with that sorta blunt, gruff, intense energy in their masculinity y'know? Someone who isn't scared to make the sort of crass and direct flirtations I'm used to only ever hearing from men and who is very outspoken about what she wants in a feminine man.

Once again, I'll reiterate: very aimless ramble I just wrote! I didn't even proofread it! I TOTALLY get it if most of y'all seriously disagree and that's cool, I kinda just wanted to get some steam off my chest. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll click with some of y'all though so ffffffff

So I’ve spent roughly the past 8 years slowly unpackaging my own messy feelings in regards to my own presentation and the sort of relationship I’d like to find myself in. It shouldn’t come as a shock to y’all that I had phases of wondering if I was perhaps transgender or bisexual, but both of those led to a pretty clear “no.” Of course I still very much support those communities, I just don’t really swing that way myself upon some self-discovery.

That said, it’s been weighing increasingly heavy on me as time has progressed as I more and moreso feel like I just, was not built for this world. And I don’t mean that in some fantastical, mystic way of “My soul belongs to some alternate fantasy dimension,” I just mean that I feel like my very identity is completely misaligned with the world I live in in such a way that it makes day-to-day life far more difficult than I would like.

Every year that passes I feel a more and more intense yearning for a life that I just don’t even think exists. I want to be married, I want to be a stay-at-home father, I wanna raise children and run errands, I wanna cook for my family and decorate a home for people other than myself. I wanna live off of a rural road, perhaps have a small garden where I grow some vegetables and go to church every Sunday with my wife and kids. I want to have a nice but humble wardrobe of traditional feminine outfits in which I can truly feel comfortable and myself. I want to be married to a strong, assertive, and truly masculine woman, someone I can look up to and feel safe with and have romantic urges for. And the thing that makes this all that much more difficult is the fact that my heart yearns for it so deeply now.

I turn 22 soon and I already feel ready to settle down and it’s killing me. Everyone I talk to either turns out to be lesbian, or we have some core values that are misaligned, or she feels I’m too young for her, or the stupidest of all, I can’t feel romantic for her because she’s just not masculine enough. It’d be one thing if I just lacked confidence in myself, like I didn’t take good enough care of myself or didn’t have a good life going but that’s not the case! I have a stable and well-paying job, I have a good set of adult skills under my belt, I moved out of my parents’ house years ago and I feel like a maintain a nice place now, I have life goals and hobbies and my own sense of style. I’m happy with myself, but when it comes to dating I just can’t seem to find ANYTHING that works and I always end up screwing things up in one way or another.

I’m just tired of waking up every day feeling like my purpose in life will never be fulfilled. Tired of my mind being flooded with romantic thoughts at any given moment. Tired of screwing up my relationships with people because I’m so overwhelmed with emotions. I feel like I was built for a society in which I would’ve been married by age 20 and having my first children right about now, but it feels like partly because of the world I live in and partly because of my own dumb, broken self, that just ain’t possible, and it’s just. Rough.

Perhaps this is a bit silly and perhaps I can see the answer coming from a mile away but regardless I wanted to post about it. Lately I’ve been trying (and failing) to meet potential romantic partners online in various capacities. Without delving into the details, there are a lot of reasons why this has been weighing especially heavy on me as of late.

That said, it often feels awkward as a man trying to find these relationships as, more often than not, in my over-eagerness I end up being a bit too forward and screwing myself over. On one hand I really don’t care to message first as I would like to be “pursued,” but on the other hand it’s a bit tough for me not to as I am very excitable and talkative, not to mention that it is a very rare event for me to find someone I’m even mildly interested in.

Do y’all have any advice on this? I feel like this problem is a recurring event in my life and I’m concerned about how it affects both myself and others.