Here you’ll find my short stories and novelettes featuring aromantic and transgender protagonists. Some stories–The Girl and Her Unicorn, Th
I thought Trans Day of Visibility a good time to mention that I have a post collecting my stories with trans aro protagonists. I often feel disconnected from the aro community in that the (albeit very limited!) representation we celebrate and bond over largely depicts cis aros. Characters who seldom encompass, because they are cis, much of how I experience being aromantic.
In order to be seen as aro, I must push my transness into the shadows. The reverse is true in trans-centred fiction, where acceptance--by ourselves and/or others--is often demonstrated via a character's experiences of romantic relationships and love. Time and time again, I must choose which part of me to celebrate and which part to ignore: I can only be transgender or aromantic in the stories about which my communities express delight.
So this is a list of aro stories about gender and trans stories about aromanticism, because we deserve recognition as trans and aro.
I have a problem with most how-to-write-character-of-X-identity posts: representation loses complexity when we reduce it to a list of must-avoid tropes and stereotypes. While this simplification ma…
Whenever I react to posts about representation that throw me under the bus as a sex-favourable, non-partnering allo-aro, I'm always asked the same question: do you have resources for writing allo-aro characters?
But there aren't many resources that focus on writing allo-aro characters (as opposed to our being included in general resources for aromantic characters). As a believer in the truth that almost any type of character can be written in stories with a sufficient amount of different allo-aro characters, most resources don't fit my philosophy as both an allo-aro and a storyteller. I've also long felt that, when it comes to allies writing allo-aro characters, the "ally" aspect is far more important--and less often discussed--than the "character" aspect.
So, for Aro Week, I'm posting a two-part series about how I think allies to allo-aros should go about the process of writing allo-aro characters.
I want to stress that these posts are not for or directed at own voices creators. (I'm not comfortable with the idea of telling other allo-aros how to go about their work!) It's also likely that other allo-aros disagree with me on some or many points when it comes to how our allies write allo-aro characters, and that’s fine: just like in anything else, we have no monolithic viewpoint on representation. Only though having lots of different conversations, and all the missteps such conversations inevitably entail, can we muddle our way towards (something close to) a conclusion.
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[image description: link banner features handdrawn illustration of a yellow pasture against a background of hills and sporadic trees. Scene is overlaid with the dark green/light green/white/yellow/gold stripes of the allo-aro pride flag. The text Aro Worlds Discussion Post sits across the image in a black, antique handdrawn type, separated by two ornate Victorian-style black dividers.]
