#hello ro aromantic community

[death47lyagushka]

Marian telefonul meu unde e

ERA SA CAD DIN PAT IL BAG IN PIZDA MASII!!

[aro-culture-is]

hello i’m so sorry to bother you but i think i might be aroace

i already have worked out that i’m ace, but recently i’ve really been questioning if i’m also aro

i’ve been in a relationship before but it lasted a week and the most we did was hold hands. i’ve been identifying as a lesbian for a while.

anyway my reason for questioning was that i don’t really think i can feel anything? i’ll see a pretty girl and go oh she’s cute but i don’t really feel anything more and i feel like i’m supposed to. recently i think a girl was crushing on me, but when i thought about kissing her, i felt really sick.

i still really, really, want a relationship, and i know im not interested in men at all.

i just don’t know what i am and i kinda hate myself for it

hi! it sounds like this has been a pretty rough time for you. I think it might be worthwhile to consider a few things here - the way you're describing your feelings sounds to me like you are actually pretty sure that you're aroace, but that you don't want to accept it.

in that case, i have a few thoughts. first of all: take a deep breath. it's okay. i promise you that this is not some kind of terrible fate. it's just one of many, many ways of being. there's a few different things you might want to think about while you process this self-discovery. for one, society often encourages a view of life in which romantic(/sexual) monogamous relationships are seen as The Ideal, and that life will be sad and unfulfilling without it. I don't know how much time you've spent talking to folks in their later years of life, but I can tell you that I've met plenty who never married and describe a happy life. it might be worthwhile to read up on amatonormativity to get an idea of this social pressure, and think on how it affects your feelings.

this isn't to say you can't still want a relationship, but, in my experience, I find that it's very worthwhile for many new aros to start with truly exploring if they want a romantic relationship, or if they want a happy and fulfilling life, and thought that meant they had to have a romantic relationship. if you do still want a romantic relationship - you're far from alone! even if you feel neither romantic nor sexual attraction, you're in good company. the same way that asexual folks can have sex for a variety of reasons, including enjoying it, aromantic folks can engage in romance. as long as everyone is comfortable, labels aren't really a big deal. do what you enjoy.

some labels that may lead you to communities or ideas that I suspect might help: romo aro is a term for aro folks who want romantic relationships, oriented aroace (such as lesbian aroace) is a term that may be worth looking into if you feel some attraction to women that doesn't fit well into romantic or sexual categories, and romance favorable aromantic works exactly the same way sex favorable asexual does - a quick way of saying "i'm a(-ro, -sexual) and i enjoy (romance, sex)".

I hope this helps!

[arosparadoxica]

hello, aromantic doug eiffel is very powerful and i'm very glad someone else is thinking about it because it's a head canon i've had for a while. I kinda go back and forth between thinking of him as grey-ro and full on aro, depending how I'm feeling. I would love to hear more about aspec wolf 359 headcanons you have

Thank you so much—this was such a wonderful ask to receive! Sorry it took me a while to get around to answering it; I have a lot of aspec headcanons for Wolf 359 and wanted to do them justice. Here’s the general rundown (along with any other LGBTQ+ headcanons I have for the handful of characters I like to interpret as aspec): 

Eiffel: aromantic

It took him a long time to realize this, and his frustration and confusion from just not getting romance and trying to convince himself he felt things he didn’t is part of why his relationship with Kate didn’t work out

He’s still dealing with a lot of internalized amatonormativity and harmful rhetoric when he winds up on the Hephaestus, and that’s part of the whole relearning-his-own-self-worth arc his character goes through

Eiffel loves his friends (his family) so much! He loves his daughter so much! He loves humanity so much!! Doug Eiffel is aro and a beacon of love!!!

He’s also bisexual and questioning gender things (he knows that he’s gnc, and is starting to think that maybe he’s genderqueer—who knows? not Eiffel!)

Hera: quoiromantic

The definition that talks about finding romantic attraction conceptually “inaccessible, inapplicable, nonsensical” really resonates with her

Can she define or explain her love for Eiffel, or Minkowski, or Lovelace? Nope! Does that matter to her, at least once she’s confident that they love her back? Nope!

She’s also kind of questioning her gender—some form of femme gender expression feels right, but gender (and orientation, and most other aspects of identity) is kind of…really really weird to grapple with when you’re an AI and don’t have any other AIs to talk to about things?

Talking to Maxwell and Eiffel helps, but when she’s back on Earth she starts chatting with some other AIs about the intersection of life as an artificial intelligence with LGBTQ+ identities and issues, and it’s amazing to finally share her questions and thoughts with people who understand her experiences

Remember in the second w359 AMA when they talk about each character’s ideal valentine’s day? Here’s some relevant quotes for you (wording might not be exact):

“[Hera] exists in a context that is so different from regular human society and kind of regular human upbringing that I don’t know how hardwired it is into her person to celebrate things like valentine’s day.”

“[Hera] has no context to care about that kind of thing…unless the people she knows care about it.” and then they talk about how most of the other characters don’t, so….

“[Hera]’s got colors to name.” (the implication being that’s more important to her than valentine’s day)

Lovelace: aspec (”aroace-ish”)

She’s also a lesbian

Lovelace always had way more fun playing basketball/baking cupcakes/sneaking onto rooftops with her various girlfriends than kissing or doing traditionally ~romantic~ activities

Lambert was actually the one who helped her figure out that she’s aspec (post-Change of Mind, once they started getting along more)

She’s never been too worried about labels; it’s enough for her to know that she falls somewhere in the general vicinity of aroace but is still attracted to women

She and Hera have a lot of good conversations about being not quite human and the way that affects their experiences, both as aspec people  and as people dealing with trauma (as well as just in general)

On Earth, the two of them also work together on a lot of community advocacy projects

Back to the valentine’s day AMA question—apparently, Lovelace grew up pulling pranks with friends on valentine’s day and “giving people scary news about the perils of love” and if that’s not arospec culture I don’t know what is

Minkowski: grey-ace & maybe grey-aro

Minkowski realized she was on the ace spectrum before figuring out she was pan, but after she knew she was trans

She’s still not sure if she’s on the aro spectrum as well—she thinks it’s pretty likely, though

Dominik isn’t really one for labels himself but after Renee first told him she was grey-ace he stayed up way too late that night researching aspec terminology because he didn’t have much experience with the community but wanted to be able to support her

Eiffel knows how to embroider and makes her pride patches for her birthday one year when they’re up on the Hephaestus (“Don’t ask him where he got the thread, Commander, you’re happier not knowing.”)

Minkowski and Dominik used to go to pride parades, marches, and local LGBTQ+ community events together; after her return to Earth, they continue doing so, but now it’s usually with at least one or two other members of the Hephaestus crew in tow (usually Lovelace, Jacobi, or Eiffel; sometimes Maxwell or Hera)

Maxwell: aroace

also agender (fine with any pronouns but usually defaults to they/them or she/her)

Jacobi makes so many (non)binary jokes about them, and so many space ace jokes, and so many—you get the idea

(Maxwell loves it)

She and Jacobi may or may not have been in a formal qpr, but they both considered each other their partner in a way that was as much about friendship and sharing a life together as it was about work

Jumping to the third w359 AMA, when Michelle Agresti talked about Maxwell’s backstory, there were some very relevant quotes:

“[Maxwell] kind of eschewed social relationships to some extent, or at least like what we have conceived of as like normal, standard relationships with people.” 

“…all of a sudden [Maxwell] was now a sexual being and people looked at her that way and she didn’t know how to deal.” 

(After that quote, Agresti also talks about how Maxwell is a person who uses every tool at her disposal but doesn’t understand how to use That.)

[re: Maxwell and Hera’s relationship and whether it was romantic] “It’s kind of a relief, I think, that because it’s an AI-human relationship…that Maxwell isn’t being judged or seen through her body in a sexual way, because that…is very difficult for Maxwell to deal with when it happens.” 

“I think that’s also why [Maxwell] likes dealing with AIs, because they don’t have a body and she has a body.” 

Lambert: aroace

Back to that second AMA one last time:

“You know what’s Lambert’s ideal Valentine’s Day? He goes to bed on February 13th and he wakes up and it’s February 15th.”

Yeah.