reblogging into the void

for all the aspec posts that i relate to, or just think are good to share. majority aplatonic, afamilial and loveless posts.

[our-aplatonic-experience]

it's kinda funny being aplatonic but also because I just loathe boredom, I find that I always try to make some friends just so I have people to kill time with. I have a very low bar for "friend" and it's basically anyone who I just kill time with because personally I don't see friendship as this whole very deep bond or something but rather just a base default of relationships once you move on from being strangers. to me, being my friend is mostly just being part of my routine and stuff and yeah but although I consider a lot of people my friends, it's mostly just a label thing because "friend" rings better than acquaintance even tho 90% of the time when I say someone is my friend, I actually just mean "some guy I call over when it's convenient"

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[mar64ds]

Happy pride! If you’re looking for aspec stories, I could recommend you my RPG Maker games.

-Friendship Test: A long story-focused game that explores different aspec identities (aromanticism, aplatonicism, lovelessness…). Lots of aspecs have seen themselves on this game, maybe you’re next. Jokes aside, it’s a passion project that means a lot to me and it’s completely free for you to enjoy!

-Exe tries to save the holidays: A short follow-up to Friendship Test! While the main focus is not on aspec themes, we do have an aspec protagonist whose identity is important for her character. The game only costs 1,30$!

-Estranged Family: A spin-off to Friendship Test which is currently on development, but there is a 2 hour long demo available! I continue to explore more aspec themes here, maybe you’ll like this one too!

-Obsolete Friends: A short semi-horror game, unrelated to the Friendship Test series. Aspec themes are not the main focus, but there are aspec characters that are important to the story. It’s my newest game and it costs 2$!

You can find all my games on itch.io! Or you can watch full playthrough on the official channels for each game. Sorry I can't link anything cause Tumblr always makes sure my posts don't show up on the tags when I include links. But you can find everything on the blogs @friendship-test and @obsolete-friends ! Either way, thanks for reading!

[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.

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is kind of wanting someone to confess to you so you can reject them and feel confident in yourself for having the ability to say no😭

a genuine suggestion: if you have anyone close to you (friends, family, mentors, therapists), it is kinda... amazing to practice consent with them. the workshop I first did this in used the example of one person asking to touch some body part on the other individual. the second person responds "no". the first person responds "I respect your no. Thank you for telling me no" or similar. Crucially, you also swap.

The idea is to say no in a safe, scripted environment to relax your instincts. Not only did you say no and have nothing bad happen - someone said no to you and it was okay for them too. Or vice versa! From there, reflect on how it felt. Were you still nervous, even in a scripted environment? How did it feel to say no? How did it feel to hear the other person say no? How did it feel to be told that your "no" was respected and thanked for it? How did it feel to say that you respected someone else's no, and to thank them for it?

[colombinna]

Can the rest of the aspec community focus their hatred of amatonormativity on heteronormative characters instead of trying to argue against queer readings please it's really disheartening to see people fighting and acting like a person can't be both acearo and another queer sexuality at the same time

[sweetpea67]

Okay I’m glad we on Tumblr have started to understand that loveless aros exist. But do you understand that not all aplatonic people are loveless? That you can be aplatonic and alloromantic, aplatonic and allosexual, aplatonic and both? Do you understand that aplatonicism isn’t a subset of aromanticism any more than aromanticism is a subset of asexuality?

[thisisindeedasideblog]

maybe contradictory but scrolling through the aro tag and seeing not one but two very friendship-focused “aro culture” posts that explicitly say “alloplatonic” just makes me very happy. cannot relate to the posts themselves one bit but oh boy is it nice to be explicitly not included.

[literallysobbingg]

I know lying usually has a negative connotation, but it's so connected to my experience being anattractional that I find it difficult to see it as inherently negative

[thisisindeedasideblog]

yknow it took me a while to realise that most people actually *want* stuff in the realm of relationships. like all those posts in aromantic circles about platonic marriage, at least some of them are deadass genuine about actually wanting that as an alternative while i was just sat here like “sure? i guess?” it’s an alternative i’d prefer over romance but id only want it to get away from romantic marriage plus i doubt it’ll happen for me considering how comparatively unthought-of it is.

[softrings]

Shout out to the romance/sex averse aroaces and greyroses. The ones that can only tolerate sex and romance in fiction if we try to force ourselves to believe it's not romantic/sexual in nature. The ones who only that feel aesthetic/sensory attraction for only like. 5 minutes max. Then never feel Again. The aroaces that dont want to "marry platonically". The ones that would rather live in a friendly community with their own space than Start a family. This is mostly for me but... Please, is there anyone else like me? The first few posts in the Aroace search is about.. Yearning. And shipping and attraction... I feel so alone. :(

[thelovelesscatholic]

It feels weird being aplatonic and having friends. It’s like I will never think of you as a friend. I am happy I met you. You will never be an essential source of happiness for me. You make life more fun. I don’t miss you when you’re gone. I like that your company is an option for me. Saying I love you and giving me hugs disgust me. Saying you’re grateful for me and being considerate of me makes me happy. I will never love you the way you love me. I hope I’m a good person to you. We will never completely understand each other. I like I can be myself around you. I hope I don’t hurt you. You can’t hurt me. If I lost you I wouldn’t grieve our relationship. I think of you without longing and view our lessons and experiences without ache. Is all of this fair to you? Is it fair to me? Is this really all okay or is it just me being selfish?

[thisisindeedasideblog]

tbh if we’re defining friendship as people you have platonic attraction/feelings for and then did friendship things with (dumb definition but i suspect that’s how a lot of ppl do it), i think i’ve only had two friends (or three but there was no history with the third). at least from memory, which is a dubious source to cite.

i’ve enjoyed my time with people enough that i prefer some over others, and thats what ive been calling friendship irl (as long as i can reasonably guess we’re going to be seeing each other for a while), but i think i only experienced true platonic attraction once or twice and for the first one i immediately made a fool of myself by being impulsive about it, which looking back is just so me. anyway, for him it’s been 2-3 years without talking to him and i’m only now starting to miss the guy

(for the second one it was after band was ending and i was again very pathetic about it. got the guys number and proceeded to never message him ever, so…)

[rabidbatboy]

PLATOPUNK, like amatopunk, is an ideology and identity that is centred around challenging platonormativity, the way we define friendship and platonic relationships, as well as recognising the aplatonic spectrum and different forms of nontraditional friendship. Anyone of any identity can be platopunk, as it encompasses many different groups of people and how platonormativity affects them.

It involves/includes:

- aplatonic people, people on the aplatonic spectrum, friendship and socially averse/repulsed/indifferent people etc, and supporting these people

- challenging the notion that platonic attraction is equal to and entails friendship or that friendship is equal to or entails platonic attraction

- challenging the notion that friendship is a necessary part of one’s life in order to feel fulfilled

- friendships between disordered and disabled individuals that do not fit into the societal standards and expectations for a friendship and challenging the notion that some of these relationships are wrong, abusive or harmful e.g transactional relationships

- nontraditional friendships like object friending, fiction friending, exclusively experiencing/desiring friendships intrasys, etc and supporting these relationships

- alloplatonics who struggle to or cannot form/keep friendships, supporting them and understanding how platonormativity affects them

No flag for now because I want to put some thought into the stripe meanings so that may come soon! Please be nicey to me bc I have been ruminating hard on this for a while and was nervous to put this out into the world

TAGGING: @radiomogai @io-archival

[thisisindeedasideblog]

On the off-chance that there are people in the community who, for whatever reason, havent figured out self-regulation yet; here's a list of stuff to do when your group (sex repulsed/favourable, partnering/non-partnering, etc, etc) feels overshadowed:

make a post, a comic, a headcanon post, a meme

go hang out in your specific tags for a bit until you feel more seen

turn on your favourite show / movie / youtube video / pick up your fav book

make a snack

anything that isnt sending anon hate or making passive-aggressive posts on main. y'all we are sharing the room, we gotta learn how to live in it.

actually the best course of action is probably to say something like "im not one of you, but good for you lot". makes everyone feel a bit more seen in this hellscape.

[verysillything]

i think its obvious that as an aspec the soumate trope would piss me off

bit what i havent seen anyone be pissed off about is how people try to "include" aroace people in it by saying "oh but not soulmates dont have to romantic!! you can be friends with your soulmate"

this statement pisses me off just as much as the trope, because, well...

hve we forgotten that there are other aspec identities besides aros and aces? there are people put there who dont want ANY type of relationships. have we forgotten that not everyone wants to confine themselves to one person, actually id like to assume no one does, people just think they do. have we forgotten about polyamorous people, have we forgotten that no matter the effort, not all relationships will work out, even if no one is at fault? have we forgotten that people can just not want to be friends, or lovers or any other forms of relationships just because they dont to? have we forgotten the consept of "the one" is not a real one, that believing that one person will provide for all your needs and love you and be perfect and that you two specifically were "meant to be" will only hurt you in the end? have we forgotten that the trope of soulmates, no matter how you twist it, will always be just "this person(or people) were meant for you, theyll never leave you alone, in flesh or in memory, youll never be happy without them, youre trapped with them and youll never move on if you leave them as your names were written in the stars." theres nothing you can do to fix this trope. itll always be a toxic mindset to have.

so yeah, maybe i got a lil bit heated there, but yeahhhhhhh, im thinking we should throw that shit in the trash

[chaosgremlinn3]

as an aspec who has read soulmate fanfiction the genre does kinda suck, it can be sweet but also irritating and it's probably better to just go find a different concept

that being said, i have read some pretty decent soulmate fanfics! platonic soulmates with a trio, found family soulmates with like, four people, romantic soulmates with three people! but it does feel kind of demeaning to loveless folks, and the whole genre is kind of a romanticized view on relationships, even if there's multiple soulmates and even if they're platonic or like family.

[knightbell]

man I feel bad for aplatonics, because romance is in almost everything, sure, but friendship is engraved into the fucking fabric of society itself at this point.

Yall must be gods strongest soldiers.

[thisisindeedasideblog]

after a bit of a think ive come to the conclusion that ive been using 'friend' as a shorthand for 'i like how this person interacts with me' and not 'i feel/am close to this person'. sure, come closeness might come with a fitting communication style, but for me it does feel like an instant binary on/off that either kicks in immediately or i dont really care -- doesnt matter how many years ive sat next to them in class, if they approach me with a typical structure of friendship i it just doesnt stick.

then again, as much as i favor the 'favourite NPC' type dynamic (im the NPC), it also doesnt stick because if they stop coming by i wont notice and i chronically fail to keep in touch.