#arotag

[seeingteacupsindragons]

How are people still in the year 2025 confused as to how aro and/or ace people are happy/what makes them happy?

I'm not an alien.

Are romantic and sexual attraction really the only things that make you happy? Discuss that with a therapist, not ace and aro people.

[quill-of-thoth]

Not to be too aroace on main, but my heart goes out to the kids theese days that are being deprived of the rites and rituals of best friendship.  So many of the little, unspoken things that meant something significant about being friends with another person are just not the same, if they’re possible at all, during social distancing. Sharing your headphones on the bus, using a sharing of personal space to declare in front of others that the two, or three, or however many of you are a unit.

And speaking as someone who went without, that’s something that, unlike adolescent experiences regarding gender and sexuality, I don’t think anyone’s really figured out how to get back. Because it’s a hallmark of childhood and tweenhood, and after that, we’re pushed to value friendship much less.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Oh, right, it's Aro Visibility Day.

Well, it's tradition to forget about it anyway.

I'm in an aromantic anthology. It's good. I particularly like my own. Just saying.

Nineteen SFF stories and poems with aromantic MCs exploring the depths of platonic relationships.

Common Bonds returns in this second volume of speculative short stories and poetry featuring aromantic characters. Housed within this antho

This is terrible promo. I'm aware. Maybe I'll reblog some of the better ones later.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Aro Week 2024: Let's Talk About the Limits of Representation

A lot of the discussion around writing marginalized identities comes down to one thing: representation. Representation in the books versus the authors, what the representation looks like, the variety of representation, what representation is present and allowed, what diversity is there and what isn’t.

For aro week, I want to talk about how limited that is for aro (and ace) people. Because the thing about representation is that to be exist beyond Word of God, it’s got to be discussed in the text. And that means romance (or sex, for ace people, but while I’m ace, and most of this is going to cross-apply, this post is for aro week so this is just a global note) has to be discussed in the text.

But a lot of time what I want as an aro person is to just not have to think about it. I think in general I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed across marginalized groups: we always have to think about our differences, and it’s a mental load and burden that other people don’t have to deal with. And as an aro writer and reader, a lot of the time what I want, and what most allows me to lay down that burden is to just not have romance in the damn thing. It’s hard to figure out how to write sometimes, it’s something I have to mentally keep in mind while I read.

While I go through life in general, I often just…forget it’s a thing. I forget when Valentine’s Day is often. I forget that people are normally dating. I forget people want to discuss with their romantic partners when making plans with friends. I forget they want to go everywhere as a group. I forget things look like dates. My life is one in which romance is rarely a factor unless imposed on it by outside forces. It’s not relevant.

But if I write that for characters, or for readers, a place where romance is not just imposed on their mind, the characters aren’t actually…aro. A story in which romance, romantic attraction, or interest in such things never comes up is one in which no character is canonically disinterested in or not in possession of such thing. It’s one which has no moments of obvious recognition of the aro experience or joyous bursts.

It’s a story in which, “Eh, they could or couldn’t be attracted. It never came up, so anything is valid because nothing is canon.”

The definition of being aro might lie in not experiencing romantic attraction. And sure, the character might not. But this is fiction. Not reality. And in reality, aro people’s experiences are more than the dictionary. People have relationships to romance and attraction and interactions with the concept are often recognizable and definitional. No real person can live without interacting with romance and attraction, and those relationships to it are as definitional and important to being aro or being gay or being straight or bi or whatever as the dictionary definition is.

Characters don’t have to interact with it. I’ve said romance isn’t relevant to my life as an aro person much of the time. If romance isn’t relevant to a character’s story—well, lots of things aren’t relevant to stories we assume are happening, like…most bathroom trips, or meals, or menstruation. A character isn’t representing an eating disorder because they’re never shown eating: it’s more complicated than that.

Being aro is more complicated than that.

A story in which character relationships wholly rely on and depend on something other than romance, a story where character relationships are undefinable and not attempted to be defined but only described and developed, a story in which characters and societies and people exist outside the omnipresent framework of romance inherently comes from a place of aroness and the aro experience. It speaks most to that place.

Most people who experience romantic attraction are often thinking about it. A story without such things is one which is lacking something they’re looking for and expecting, not a story where everything proceeds as usual without being interrupted by Oh, Yeah, That.

So, then, if alloromantic people will notice something is Different and aro people might seek it out, this way of writing around romance because it’s not relevant to the story the way it is not relevant to my life needs to be framed in the metatext so people, aro and alloro alike, know what to expect and what they’re getting into.

But when all talk about marginalized stories comes down to “What Types of Characters Are Here?” and “What Culture Is This World Based On?” there’s this empty space to explain stories like mine.

There’s so many things to the aro experience that don’t revolve around rejecting romance. But if you ever look for an aro story about something else, how can you even find it? It’s so difficult to talk about an aro story that isn’t Representative and exists in a way you don’t even have to think about it and there are no smooth bumps to remind you of yourself so you can immerse into it that…I think people forget stories like that can even exist.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Common Bonds 2

An Anthology of Aromantic SFF!

I'm really excited! And there's discounts for Aro Week right now!

[seeingteacupsindragons]

For some reason, when people talk about how they actually like someone romantically, they tend to default to, "More than friends."

But when someone mistakenly assumes that they like someone romantically, the rebuttal is usually, "No, I don't like them like that."

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "No, I don't like that person enough to date them." They always speak about it with the innate knowledge that it's not the quantity of affection that matters, it's the quality.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I realized this the other day and I find the dichotomy interesting.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

@ladytemeraire

Oooh, good start to the week, although it wasn't a topic I was going to cover.

Honestly, personally, not really, no, not at all. I don't always write romance, and some people seem...puzzled, that I write it ever. But I do like romance sometimes, and I do write it relatively frequently, actually, although less frequently these days because I have less time and I'm enjoying weirder and less definable relationships more now.

And while I don't quite Get romance in the real world...I have read so much romance that at the very least, I know the narrative beats. I know how it's written and portrayed in fiction, and I can mimic that.

If I want people to ship two characters, people generally cotton on and ship them. I write very compelling relationships, and romance is one of those types.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

A brief thread on my Aro Origin Story for Aromantic Awareness Week, imported over from my Twitter account where it may be more accessible.