evil little cyclops

im em | they/them | one of those evil partnered aros | dni if youre proship/"anti anti" or like harry potter or hazbin hotel

[tuherrus]

you don't even have a dog

[peach-pot]

being anti-amatonormativity in a romance centered world is like watching half the people you know put all their eggs in one basket and then drop the basket and all their eggs break and they’re crying and swearing they’re never gonna do that again and then a month later they have all new eggs in a new basket and they tell you the problem was they didn’t have a strong enough basket or fresh enough eggs and then they drop the fucking basket again.

[aromantic-journal]

Begging you to actually engage with conversations about aromanticism and asexuality outside of a fandom lense no I don't care about the character we are real life people

[knifearo]

by the way

[dykesbat]

[ID: Image of the aromantic flag with an emoji of someone giving a thumbs up and the caption, “You can do whatever you want forever.” End ID.]

[specialagentartemis]

this isn't really the same thing as intentionally/unintentionally a-spec characters but it is interesting thinking about how intentionality does dramatically change how characters read regarding a-spec identities and themes.

So: repurposed vaguely Kinseyesque scale describing your aromantic and/or asexual protagonist's awareness of and relationship to their own aromanticism/asexuality:

Unaware That This Is A Thing People Can Be. Type specimen: Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl. Has never once considered that "not wanting romance or sex" is a thing people could feel, let alone identify as. He is normal, which means straight. It's just a coincidence that his relationship with his girlfriend was a disaster and now he's just way too busy in this new nightmare dystopia world for any of that! Anyway!

Aware They Have These Feelings, Assumes Everyone Else Also Does. Type specimen: Doug Eiffel from Wolf 359. Firmly believes that his aro-allo experiences are universal and everybody else is just better at acting like a functional human being than he is. Being a huge movie nerd also leads him to believe that "romance" as we understand it is massively exaggerated for drama in movies and people in real life don't actually do and feel that stuff any more than they mind-meld or can use the Force. He's just a fuckup at everything; why wouldn't relationships be included in that? For most of the show if you told him about aromanticism he would NOT be comforted about it, he'd probably take it as a diagnosis that his fuckup-ness regarding relationships was innate and incurable. (This doesn't have to be negative; this is also where Andy Wheyface from Arden falls and he is having a GRAND old time.)

Aware They Have These Feelings, Realizes That It Sets Them Apart From Others, Doesn't Conceptualize It As Part Of An Identity. Type specimen: Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary. His reaction to other people having sex is mostly "why would you do that." His single attempt at a serious romantic relationship didn't work out and he has a nagging sense that there is something in him that can't maintain serious relationships; attributes it to cowardice and fear of commitment. Ironically he does know what asexuality is. He's a middle school teacher in 2020s California, he has absolutely gotten LGBTQ+ Sensitivity Education at least in "pamphlet listing queer identities" form, he for sure has students with pride flag pins on their backpacks and pride stickers on their notebooks, and he is also not immune from the Culture War Bullshit around gender in schools. Knowing that asexuality exists did not even slightly lead him to apply this to himself.

Aware They Have These Feelings, Considers Them Significant, Attributes Them To Some Existential Feature Of Their Existence Rather Than A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot is very confident it does not want anything to do with romance or sex, and it attributes this to Being A SecUnit, and romance and sex are Human Things SecUnits Don't Do. Has not yet realized that this is an itself thing and not a SecUnit thing. Probably willfully at this point.

Considers These Feelings A Significant Aspect Of Their Selfhood, But Doesn't Name It. Type specimen: Sister Carpenter from The Silt Verses. Clearly confident in who she is and what she wants in her personal relationships, recognizes that as something that makes her different from others and out of step with what others expect from her, and is basically like, that's their problem. She knows who she is. Sometimes other people try to make it her problem but she has so many other problems that societal amatonormativity keeps getting pushed lower and lower on her list of Problems.

Recognizes Themself As Aromantic/Asexual As A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Nova NoStar from InCo. Clearly considers this part of her identity, but is allergic to talking about her feelings even at her therapy android's insistence and besides that's not anybody else's business is it?

Publicly Identifies As Asexual And Describes It With Period-Correct Sexual Orientation Language. Type specimen: Sally Grissom from ars PARADOXICA. The only character I've ever heard come out as asexual and lay out the definition in terms of sexual orientation and attraction to another character on-air that made me go "yeah she would do this, this is in character for Sally." Strongly feel like she would be an active commenter on the 2010s ace blogosphere. Would get in an argument about the correct definition of asexuality on AVEN.

X. Their Culture Conceptualizes Intimate Relationships In A Fundamentally Different Framework Than We Use. Type specimen: Breq from the Imperial Radch Trilogy. Whatever model of gender and sexuality the Radch is on it is NOT ours. Breq is still not interested though.

[just-aro]

sometimes it's so very draining that the majority of aro content is about fictional relationships.

irl, i live alone. irl, i am disabled. irl, that intersection and my lack of interest in partnering actively makes life really hard. everything is expensive. i can't always cook when i want to or have fresh ingredients, because my symptoms don't care if I want to cut up vegetables and eat something homemade before they go bad. if I have a bad flareup and getting up is not in the cards, that's it. i have what's next to me. the lack of social support for single folks, for disabled folks, for folks whose family care is inadequate or damaging... it's impactful.

I talk about how i once visited a place with an ex partner. i mention how our relationship started because i was pressured into it, and i wasn't really into the level of seriousness and 'forever' she treated it with. everyone says it's weird that i agreed if i didn't want it to be serious. i remember being 16, saying no, and a chorus of people telling me i was stupid and immature, that her family was rich, that we would be cute and to listen to them, not my heart. my heart was saying nothing.

i look at my current age and life goals. for many of my peers, dating and marriage and eventual kids are common goals. i am watching my rights erode and trying to practice good mental hygeine. my five year goal is to be alive. my next major life milestone is a nebulous desire to find a life i can tolerate living.

being aromantic significantly impacts my day to day. i want to see aro people living their lives, and doing so with joy. i want to see aro adults making it, ones like me. i want aro people to thrive. i want to live, aromantically.

i scroll the aro tag. it's fandom and shipping and asexual posts.

[just-aro]

okay to reblog! if i didn't want folks to reblog, i would turn off their ability to do so!

[mushroom-punk]

i love polyamory i love aromanticism i love QPRs i love communal child rearing let’s all get weirder forever

[knifearo]

“there are always more fish in the sea!” babe no offense but i just really sincerely do not want to go fishing

[knifearo]

from some of the comments i am seeing about having a hard time with fishing or wanting to fish in a specific way or looking for a white whale or wanting to skip the fishing and go straight to having a fish i feel i need to clarify the metaphor. this is not about the fishing itself to me as much as the fish. there’s this whole societal thing that pushes people to feel like they should be eating fish all the time and while fish are awesome for some people!! and while some people Want fish but don’t like the pressure about it!! i do not like fish i do not want fish and in fact i often feel as if i may exhibit an allergic reaction to seafood

[eyefocusing]

get more asexual

[eyefocusing]

get more aromantic

[mysweetoddbird]

listen to me. if youre aro you have to be louder about it. i dont care how loud about it you are already you have to be louder. if we have to be surrounded knee deep by amatonormativity all the time every day its good for the soul to be loud and annoying about your aromanticism

[arotechno]

I've been thinking a lot lately, and I think something gets lost in the conversation when it comes to the whole "ID-ing as aspec because of trauma" conversation.

Yes, it is wrong to conflate aspec identities with trauma, and it is wrong to say to an aspec person something along the lines of "what happened to make you this way." But it's not wrong because the idea of orientation and trauma being related is absurd and harmful. It's wrong because (1) that's just a deeply inconsiderate thing to say to a person, whether it's true or not, and (2) it implies that aromanticism and asexuality are an affliction that you acquire and something to be fixed, not a neutral or natural state of being and a part of one's identity.

I think in addition to those points, though, and perhaps most crucially: (3) it suggests that "healing" from one's trauma is about reverting back to baseline, back to "normal", back to who you were before, and that just isn't how it works. We already know that trauma and other experiences can rewire how your brain and body work, sometimes permanently; why should one's orientation be exempt from that?

If someone has had experiences, negative or otherwise, that lead them to feel most comfortable using an aspec label, or being in aspec spaces, and they don't feel any need to change that or go back to how they "used" to be, who am I to begrudge them the language and community that helps them make sense of their reality? Who am I to judge someone's reasons for putting a label on something as nebulous and individual and socially constructed as their sexuality, just because I feel I was "born" this way? If someone's reasons for identifying this way make you uncomfortable, why? And why should your comfort dictate what language others can use for themselves?

I am very tired of the narrative that there is a sexuality/romantic orientation/gender/whatever else that you are inherently born as and if something "happens" to make you something else then it should be fixed. I already hear enough that my aromanticism and asexuality are things to be fixed, and this is how I've always been. Why would I ever want to project such an idea onto other aspec people, just because their reasons for identifying as aspec are different or perhaps even transient? It is of no material threat to me whatsoever. In fact, I think people having the language and the support to make sense of their lives and to build a life without romance and/or sex, if that's what they want, can only ever be a good thing, regardless of why they want it. They're all welcome on my shores.

When I hear "you can't ID as aro/ace because of trauma" what I actually hear is "YOUR aromanticism and asexuality are begrudgingly acceptable because you were born that way and can't help it, if you could fix it then you should, and if you weren't born that way then this is a tragedy that has befallen you and you should fix it." Maybe some people's journey with trauma does not involve "fixing" their sexuality but instead embracing what their life looks like now and being content with that. If they're okay with that, why do you care? There are people with trauma in your community who can't extricate that trauma from their identity. How is that a threat to you? How would eliminating those people from your community magically make society more understanding of aspec identities? I promise you it wouldn't. Confront your own discomfort. Your discomfort is not harm.

[arotechno]

been getting a lot of very insightful and thoughtful responses to this post lately and i really appreciate that, both from the standpoint of building community and deeper understanding of one another and of the diversity of queer experiences, and from the standpoint of feeling validated/comforted by the notion that my thoughts on this are not as niche as they felt like they were in the moment when i was being told off elsewhere for such an idea. thanks y'all 💚

[artemisiamasterofnone]

Yeah that character is cool but what if they were aromantic

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Maybe it's just because I'm aro but American wedding culture is out of control. You should literally never be going into debt for a single party, no matter how important that party is at the moment. Do you really want to start your marriage off by dropping tens of thousands on one day instead of investing that money into your future with your partner?

[if-i-am-not-for-me]

I agree with this, and extend this feeling to engagement rings

[valtsv]

lowkey i want more "problematic" aromantic and/or asexual representation. i want aro/aces who are unhappily married or in romantic relationships that they abandon for entirely selfish and not necessarily sympathetic reasons. i want aro/aces who are bitterly jealous of their friends' romantic partners for making them happy in ways they never could. i want aro/aces who are corrupted by power because they can't find satisfaction in other people. and i want romantic relationships that are ruined by friendships or even the allure of isolation. i want love to lose.

[valtsv]

i want a character in a romantic relationship to sincerely feel like they're cheating on their partner with their friend(s) or their work/quest/whatever. and i want them to break up about it with the same degree of drama and grief that would have happened if they'd actually been having an affair.

[mysweetoddbird]

listen to me. if youre aro you have to be louder about it. i dont care how loud about it you are already you have to be louder. if we have to be surrounded knee deep by amatonormativity all the time every day its good for the soul to be loud and annoying about your aromanticism

[lucesdulces]

helloooo tumblr it’s been a good while!!! but happy international asexuality day (and very LATE aro awareness week!)

🖤🩶🤍💜 | 🧡💛🤍🩵💙 | 💚🤍🩶🖤

[left to right: gloria, marino, and gabriel]

[arokalypse]

the entire year is aro pride year and anyone who says otherwise will be sent to the sun