#I also thought i was aromantic for a while

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

In response to the Mile High Job post, I hate that Parker implies that poor flight attendant slept her way to a promotion/better shift. Her day is super weird but her cat is fine and her life is saved. That rumor, however, might stick and that didn't really feel like Leverage to me.

Agreed!

The thing with Leverage is that it's a show from the late 2000s; it feels contemporary, but actually it is a bit dated. And, like all shows, it had some problematic elements, which get a bit more Obviously Problematic as time goes by (I am just waiting for someone to write a lengthy call-out post in 5 years' time and for the Discourse to start.) For example, Tumblr loves to declare that Leverage has a "canon" throuple, but if anyone read that and then watched the show they would be profoundly disappointed - while it's a fantastic ship with a great many shippy instances, Elliot has a lot of onscreen No Homo moments, and frequently is shown sleeping with random women (I personally read him as aromantic). Similarly, there are two big relationships in that show: Nate/Sophie, and Parker/Hardison. And we all wax lyrical about the brilliance of Parker/Hardison and how healthy it is, and for good reason; but we gloss over how unbearably "I hate my wife/father I cannot click the book" Boomer humour Nate/Sophie is.

(He literally calls her a shrew in one episode. She throws a tantrum and sulks if he doesn't remember the exact details of how/where they met. She's stereotypically 'romantic' and he's stereotypically 'cynical' and she has to Save Him From Himself, and he self-deprecatingly says he should just know when to stop arguing because she's always right. Like... it is a grubby and uncomfortable dynamic; but, it's also aimed at a different segment of the audience that is older than me, and that's okay, actually. It just means I don't much care for the ship myself.)

Anyway, this is one other such instance. Clearly someone in the writers' room thought that was a funny joke, and not enough people disagreed, and so in it went. What's nice is that Sandi McCree, who plays the other flight attendant that stays on the plane, actually kind of saves that joke for me with her performance. When Parker first boards and declares that her co-worker is not coming in, McCree looks disgruntled at the sudden change to her staff list when she wasn't informed; she's annoyed at management. Then Parker makes the sleeping-with-pilots comment, and McCree looks disgusted and furious -

An expression she then pulls at Parker every time she sees her for the rest of the episode, even when Parker is technically not doing anything particularly weird. It's not necessarily intentional on McCree's part (Parker IS very weird in this episode, so it very much can be a response to that), but to me it means you can read it as "This woman is absolutely furious at the lateral sexism of this white girl because We Love And Support Each Other On This Plane." So, for me, between that and the aforementioned revelations of the day (the plane was brought down by the domestic terrorists of a Fortune 500 company, but saved by... a few unexplained Official People who snuck aboard??? And the other flight attendant was made to miss the plane after all under mysterious circumstances and was not promoted??? What???), I don't think Sandi McCree's character wouldn't put those pieces together.

[honeypot-sapphic]

Me holding on to the last threads of my asexual identity so I don't lose the one constant part of how I've identified for as long as I've known I'm queer

[dreamsy990]

some of the less nice thoughts about being aroace

extras below the cut

sketch

closeups on my favorite panels

bonus: adios

[saturnniidae]

I love how like, ambiguous so many Studio Ghibli 'couples' are. They're primarily male/female duos, and it's clear how much they love and care for each other, but more often than not it's never explicitly stated to be romantic. And their bonds aren't treated any less for it.

Idk it's just something I've always held close to my heart as someone who grew up not feeling romantic attraction the way most do, it made the characters feel more relatable and human to me, and while I still didnt fully understand my identity (didn't know being aro was a thing), it helped me better reconcile with it. And I feel that's incredibly important.

(And not just from an aro perspective. portrayal of m/f friendships is rare and something we desperately need more of)

Yes, they love each other deeply, but they don't need to kiss or be a couple for that love to be agknowledged and treated with importance. It's not any less than it would be if they weren't platonic. Hell, it doesn't even need to strictly be platonic or romantic. It could just be somewhere in between and that's okay.

Studio Ghibli fr out here making the most alterous duos I've ever seen.

[many-gay-magpies]

seeing all these posts talking about payneland as if its some tragic unrequited love drives me insane ngl. or i guess not TRAGIC but the posts that are like "man edwin really got every boy except the one he wanted" HE ALREADY HAD HIM. HE ALREADY FUCKING HAD HIM ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?? MAYBE NOT ROMANTICALLY BUT GOD HE HAD HIM. AND HE STILL HAS HIM.

[onioneyez]

Everything’s a spectrum so I’m doing a chart to try and understand my aromanticism 😌

[thedemonsurfer]

-lays down-

I KNOW the thing is like. Ace people can fuck, aro people can date-- but also that's apparently not supposed to be applied to characters because it's an excuse--

But like, here's the thing. Look me in the eyes here.

Then fucking write them outside of traditional shipping.

Stop telling people what they can and can't write and write it YOURSELF

You can come up with a million "but what if" statements, and at the end of the day this is still a "You can't ship [x] because [y]" comment being made.

So get good! Write the stories you want to see!

[braidedhades]

just found out that non-aromantics actually have feelings towards the people they decide to have a crush on. Apparently it’s not like, “hmmm should I consider this person for dating? what are the pros and cons here?” Or like, “I want to be really close friends with that person” But it’s like an actual emotional response or something? An emotion that is different from the “I wanna be really close friends” emotion??

also I just figured out that I’m aromantic

[cpyclopse]

Happy Aro Spectrum Week!

Rarity is so aroace to me

[My art]

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I think we may have integrated a little too hard the idea that being aroace is the "easy mode" of queerness, and so contextualized all acephobic experiences as "not that bad" inherently rather than taking a hard look at them and what they can look like

[automaticnerdbread]

Haha!! Take that!

*Platonics your love song*

[ticklepinions]

Welcome to another episode of am I an asshole or just aroace.

Recently I've been in a situation where I've contemplated my sexuality a lot. My best friend has been telling me all about their dating escapades and honestly I'm a bit over it. Obviously as a friend I want to support someone I care about, but I just get into this mood I can't really explain??? I get so disinterested and even feel a bit hurt in a way. So ofc I do some reflecting and I think I found an answer.

A lot of my friendships with people ususlly looked different when they were romantically involved with someone. They would obviously need to prioritize their romantic partner, but sometimes I felt discarded. And i feel like we don't talk about that enough. I mentioned it a bit in my other post but to be pretty much replaced by someone you only know for a short amount of time feels some typa way. And I get it- I won't be priority #1 and I'm okay with that. But I feel like sometimes, men especially, have this toxic idea that their partners become their everything. And in turn, (in my case at least), pay less attention to their friends since their partner is now their sole support system.

So I think there's this small voice in my head telling me that when my friend(s) do find a partner, I'm just gonna be cast aside. I would be absolutely elated if my friend did find someone though, i just know for myself it would be an adjustment.

I feel like loneliness for an aroace person hits a bit different. Especially as I'm getting older, and seeing all of the people I know get into relationships, get married, and/or having kids. My family always asks when I'm going to get a partner (I haven't and probably couldn't come out to them safely). So many times I've been told I haven't found the "right person" or my aroace identity is "just a phase". And it's just gotten so old and bothersome at this point.

I can't even discern what thoughts are my own or the internalized aro/acephobia thats been deeply entrenched in my mind. I feel like I'm trapped in a state of just not knowing. And i get it, I have time, I can discover a different identity that makes more sense for me. But I don't want it!? I feel the most myself being asexual and aromantic (i think!). It's just that having to explain why or justify my existence is getting so exhausting. The way platonic love is just automatically pegged to be the least of all the other loves is just so sad to me.

I know about qprs and honestly they sound pretty dope but idk I might just end up with this loneliness eating away at me. The relationship I'd want with a person just seems so niche and unrealistic. I'm just real tired of living up to others expectations in every sense possible. Tired of not being enough. Tired of being stuck in this in-between of caring so much but not at all.

and I shouldn't have to feel like I have to be in a relationship of any kind to be whole 😩. But I think for myself I'd want it? But not the way society has envisioned it y'know?

[rewrittenwrongs]

In a universe where the bats are present on social media, I like to think they announce out of the blue that for pride month they’ll be changing the inside of their capes (or other pieces of their outfits if they don’t have one) to match their respective flags. This of course causes several identity crisis’s among them.

[hellishgayliath]

Hellii Hellooo

Ignore my previous message, my keyboard was being STUPID and submitted it-

Anyway- 1) Does Pico know or understand the concept of a 'date'? 2) If yes, do Pico & Bao go on dates? 3) & if yes again, are they rare or common occasions?

I witness ALL MOON👀👀👀

lmao hoi anyways

I'd think so yes! I'd consider Pico being the one to ask out Bao, cuz where he grew up the animals he'd see when it came to courting each other they make their point very upfront, so if he takes interest in someone he's just gonna go for it. Plus he sees his uncles Warren and Hypno all the time and can already tell how smitten they are with other, he's no stranger to that.

Also yesssss!! I haven't drawn anything yet for them cuz I wanna draw their first meeting with each other first and foremost before I do sweetsy stuff (whenever that comes to pass)

Okay Date stuff or more like outings tho. I think Bao would enjoy taking Pico out around the Hidden City, showing him all of his favourite spots, catching in the sights etc. Pico would love it, but he still is basically a farmboy, so I think he could only handle being in large crowds and the overwhelming bustling city for so long and stick by Bao's side so they don't get separated once the wonder wears off. Bao would take this into account and try to think of areas where it's less noisy and crazy. On Pico's end of setting up dates, he'd invite him out to the forest, maybe spend some time with the dogs, go on picnics or hikes/walks. It's a good break for Bao too since he's busy running the tea shop all the time and could go for some peace and relaxation once in a while.

3. Hmmmmmmm I'd say they'd happened pretty frequently :3

[altschmerzes]

Hey! im ace and aro and was wondering if you could talk about what being engaged and getting married means and looks like to you as an aro person? I feel like so few people talk about it that i have no real frame of reference. it’s really cool that you’re happy and living authentically doing all these things and i guess yeah i just wanted to hear more about that if you felt like sharing! have a great day <3

yeah!!! i'm happy to talk abt that!! it's definitely nothing i've seen any kind of like..... broader awareness of, or people talking about, and i probably would've been like. more optimistic about my future if it had been something i'd seen, i think. this got a little long so i'm throwing it under a cut but here it is!! a bit of an explanation of like. How My Engagement/Marriage Works And How That Came To Be. (signed off on by my fiance, for the record - i didn't want to write out an answer to this without checking with them, but they're totally fine with it!)

i think it's probably wildly confusing to some people to see me post and talk abt being aro A Lot (it's one of the most prominent aspects of my online personality i think sdlfjs) including being like. incredibly romance repulsed, and then mention being engaged or having a fiance or referencing 'my wife' (though we're not married yet it is one of my Favourite jokes to make because 1. i think it's very funny, and 2. i just like saying it). people contain multitudes etc etc but i do wonder if people are confused by that sldfjs. my engagement is like... honestly everything i'd ever have hoped for if i'd asked myself at any point in the years since i started identifying as aromantic what my ideal life would include.

i've always had a hard time being alone and i wanted the intimacy and mutual support and just. ability to Do Life with someone that a relationship involved, while also being, as i've said, intensely romance repulsed and not really open to sex either. really just sort of figured that wasn't going to happen for me. the odds of not only meeting an aroace person (the only sort of person i thought might have an interest in the same sort of relationship i wanted and was comfortable with) irl never mind being compatible with them personally and in our priorities just seemed incredibly slim. which like... made me sad sometimes. i'd always sort of daydreamed about getting married which is wild for someone who is as romance repulsed as i am, which i know i keep saying but it really is an incredibly intense feeling for me (i tried dating once in high school and had several panic attacks before breaking it off after our third extremely mild fourteen/fifteen year old date, and often feel physically ill trying to read about fictional romance/watch it on tv). but y'know. sometimes we just don't get what we want in life, and i was fine with the idea of having my friends and my synagogue community and like. hoping my friends wouldn't all leave me behind alone as they all got into relationships.

what ended up happening is obviously not that. i'm really truly unbelievably thrilled every day to wake up and remember what i've got to look forward to every day. my engagement is entirely platonic, and it's exactly what both of us want and are just. beyond happy with and excited for. my fiance is a lesbian, actually, and has been incredibly good and patient with reassuring me that the relationship we have, exactly as it is, is what they want too, that they don't feel like i'm depriving them of anything. we love each other very much, and we're building the life together that we want, in exactly the way that we want.

and that's how it happened, really. we talked about what we wanted. i got engaged at the end of what i've referred to as a 'several hour long conversation' which is the truth sdlkfs. a close friend and i both had sort of 'evaluating the next couple years of our lives and how we wanted pivotal parts of our futures to go' moments about the same time, and it came up i think mostly as a half-serious suggestion that we could get married. for logistical reasons, it made sense for us. and then we started talking about what that might look like - what we wanted, from our lives and our futures, and our hypothetical marriage. and the more we talked about it, the more serious it got, the more real it got, and the more we both i think realized we wanted the same thing. the same life, the same way, together.

we talked about a whole lot in that first couple of days. one of the very first things we talked about actually was kids - did we want them? what was important to us about having and raising children (names, religion, etc)? then it was stuff like did we have strong feelings about where we lived. did we want our own rooms in our home, did we want to wear rings (i love my engagement ring. it makes me smile every time i notice it on my hand), what did we want to tell our friends. we had conversations about whether and how we wanted a wedding. what sort of physical intimacy we were comfortable with, what sort we might want (really glad we did that, and that we were honest and open about that - nothing better, it turns out, than Cuddling Your Wife). what sort of affection we were comfortable with around other people.

our relationship, our life, is what we want it to be. exactly what we want it to be. what makes us happy. we've built it from a vast and beautiful array of choices and options, adding the things we want and leaving the things we don't. it's an approach i would highly recommend to everyone, honestly - talking about what you want out of your relationship, what you want to do and how you want to be with someone rather than just picking which of a short list of proscribed 'types of relationship' you want to have. it leaves a lot more room for nuance and what will actually make you happy than much less contextually nuanced things like assuming your definition of 'dating' will match the other person's, or that the kind of relationship you want just isn't possible. setting up that kind of foundation in communication and honesty and being clear about our expectations and needs has fostered a relationship where i feel respected and valued and heard - and i'm reasonably certain (and i hope!) that they feel the same.

we travelled to my birthplace so they could be introduced to my family and my childhood best friend. it's always both surprising and amusing to me every time someone assumes i'm gay (gender is complicated but we both tend to read as women) - this happened a lot there, and as i've told my extended family and other more casual friends about my engagement. this doesn't bother me at all (i'm not out to almost anyone irl as aromantic, and it's a reasonable conclusion to reach given what information they have) but it's extremely funny when i also get to find out which of my family members/people i knew in middle school always sort of wondered if i was gay but never asked sldkjs. turns out the answer is 'a lot'.

re: assumptions, for the most part, we don't bother explaining the nature of our relationship to people. this is also something we talked about! we discussed how much we wanted to clarify or contextualize, and decided that ultimately like... with the exception of people we're very close to, and in contexts like this (fairly anonymous post on ye olde internet with the ability to immediately block anyone who clowns on it), it's really nobody's business unless we decide it is and we're cool with just letting people assume whatever. that does lead to some like... i can't speak for them but it gets a little weird for me sometimes, i'm not gonna lie. it feels a little like getting misgendered, having people assume that i'm in a romantic relationship. i say that as a nonbinary person who's mostly just. chill about not being out about that irl. that's the best descriptor i have to help people understand what might be a hard thing to understand. but it doesn't bug me enough to want to put myself - or my fiance - through what correcting that assumption would involve. i mostly don't blame anyone for it - it's extremely reasonable to assume someone who is engaged is in a romantic relationship with the person they're engaged to - except for when friends who know i'm aromantic and somehow think this means that's... changed, somehow? or jump to assuming i'm in a romantic relationship before considering i might not be in one and still be engaged anyway. so it's kind of weird, and feels a little bad, but not enough to really do anything about it except hope the world changes a bit and stops making assumptions about other people's relationships at some point.

that's really the only downside, hand to gd. that and worrying that there might be consequences, legally, if the wrong person finds out we're married but Not Like That. everything else is honestly amazing. it's the best thing that's ever happened to me and i'm so unbelievably happy. i never thought i'd ever get to be this happy, or have a future this bright and warm and full of love to look forward to. having spent a lot of my life for various reasons thinking i just wouldn't have a future at all, it's like every day is a really incredible dream, except i'm never going to have to wake up.

the moral of the story i guess, if you've made it this far in this novel of an answer, anon, which i wouldn't bet on, because it's so much longer than i planned on it being (SORRY SDLKFJS i guess this is more than just a 'writing fic' problem for me now XD), is that your relationships are what you make them. assuming that what you want isn't possible, or that nobody could possibly want the same thing, is a great way to cheat yourself out of something wonderful. nobody has to have any kind of relationship, obviously, if they don't want one, but i think there are a lot of people - aromantic and not! though i do think this probably impacts aro people. more. - who could benefit from the idea that there are more options out there than just like... 1. romantic relationship constructed in a specific way and following a specific path, and 2. being alone.

[powerfulkicks]

tried my hand at creating a flag for the aspec community as a fun exercise.

the pink is color picked from the original rainbow flag, mixed with white. this is meant to represent our connection to the LGBT+ community, but also our unique relationship to sex and sexuality. the white is also meant to represent those of us who do not experience sexual attraction or are otherwise uninterested in sex.

the reddish color is meant to represent romance and romantic attraction, mixed with white to represent those of us who do not experience or are uninterested in romantic attraction. it also represents self-love and self acceptance about our identity, as many of us struggle with feeling broken or wrong.

the yellow is meant to represent platonic attraction and queerplatonic relationships, mixed with white to represent those of us who don't desire queerplatonic relationships. it also represents the friendship we share with each other and the community at large.

the white is meant to tie the flag together by representing the lack of attraction all of us feel. while it is present in all other stripes of the flag, this makes our lack of attraction explicit and shows how we are all connected in our shared identity. it also represents those who do not want any kind of relationship.

this was a fun thing to do! feel free to use if you want :)