#or puts the aros in qprs or writes a romantic relationship exploring how a character who doesn't experience romantic attraction navigates i

[viviennevermillion]

Seeing people only use "but some asexuals have sex!!!" and "some aromantics are in romantic relationships!!!" so they can sexualize & ship the little representation we get makes me hope someone explicitly establishes a popular character as sex-repulsed so we can see the shippers get cooked online for it

[hazelfoureyes]

why smut with an ace character?

This person was a minor so I won’t reply directly. I would love to discuss sexual orientation and the wibbly wobbly nature of attraction and pleasure to someone who I think needs a space to discuss it but as an adult stranger? That’s not my place and I would be wildly uncomfortable doing so directly. But! For anyone who does see my blog and wonders why, I’ll have this set on my master list to save me time

Heheheheh MY TIME HAS COME

closing in on 5 months of being on tumblr and this is my first “BUT ACE!” Comment/inbox

so, why?

✦Alastor is canonically Ace! The aro aspect was mentioned by an important staffer but has been left off as a descriptor by Viv herself and no accepted as canon. She gave her explicit permission to write them as we are comfortable with.

✦Asexuals can and do fuck! 💦 (my source? My ace spec partner!)

✦Alastor’s ace spectrum is often times an important aspect of my stories!

I always have Alastor motivated into sexual situations for non-sexual reasons.

Closeness, intimacy, fulfilling a partner’s needs, a biological imperative, for power, for control, putting someone into a submissive to embarrassing position. It’s to see someone break and bend to his will (with consent).

But lets shift into asexuality now --- how I write him isn't a representation of all ace people! It’s just how I view his place on the spectrum. Being Ace doesn't mean you can't ever want sexual pleasure in any form, it doesn't mean you never think about sex or enjoy seeing it.

Letting people explore the range of being asexual is as important as with any other sexual orientation. If you feel people being non-sex repulsed and being Ace is making your own identification harder to make clear to strangers —- well then I wonder if the label itself is more important to you than the community we all desperately seek and need when we publicly acknowledge our sexuality. We publicly say we’re LGBTQIA+ because these labels are for self identification and signal to like minded people and allies we're here. This is how I love and how I want to be loved. Maybe one day a different word will exist to separate the spectrum but we’re living and working with what we have today and how we find each other now. “Why not call him grey ace?” It’s each individuals decision how they wanna identify!

Full circle. Why do I write SO much smut about an ace character? Of course I think that animated deer man’s personality is hot lmao but also because I love this character and identify with him a lot! Being ace doesn't mean he doesn't ever have sex or ever enjoy physical pleasures! Writing about someone seeking out pleasure for non-sexual reasons is very fun for me as someone who doesn't identify with the romantic aspect of sex many people put on it. Do ace people fuck for romantic reasons? Yes! Absolutely! Being Asexual doesn’t mean you’re Aromantic!

Why not write fluff or QPR? Because I'm aromantic and it's harder for me but I am trying and am getting better at it because I want to write more things that meet the needs and wants of many kinds of people. As for QPR, I'm still learning what those relationships look like and learning how to idenfity them in my own life!

And finally— it’s valid to write him as any form of Ace or even not Ace at all! I prefer to keep him Ace spec but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to make him not. He’s not real and the creator has given us permission to do so. 👌🏼

[furst1ded]

Thoughts on Shipping Alastor from an AroAce person

(this entire thing is copy and pasted excerpts from a Discord rant so if the grammar is funky, that's why, I just felt like giving my 2 cents on the topic)

Aroace people can still participate in romantic and sexual interactions. All being aro/ace/aroace means is you don't feel romantic/sexual attraction upon seeing other people. You can feel it later on or in waves or could never feel that attraction but still can participate and love others in a fulfilling way. Some aroace people are fine performing intimacy onto others but dislike reciprocation, others are the opposite where they're fine receiving but not giving. It's a spectrum.

The nuances of asexuality and aromanticism aside, you can be in a relationship without being in a relationship. Platonic relationships beyond friendship are a thing (QPRs for example). But like, I get it. Not everyone who ships Alastor keeps it confined to a QPR. And his character seems pretty sex-repulsed and romance-averse. But here's the other thing. He's fictional. As long as his character remains aroace in canon, fans taking the silly radio man and making him kiss the devil isn't taking away from aroace representation.

This next bit is coming from me as an AroAce person myself. I ship Alastor. I write/read him kissing people and fucking and acting romantic. And guess what? It's related to expressing my sexuality. Alastor is one of my favorite characters in anything ever and I love that there's a character that represents a facet of myself in a popular media. I relate to him so goddamn much and that's why I ship him. He's a fictional character I like that I project onto, so I use him as a way to navigate and explore romantic/sexual relationships that I'm never going to participate in myself. He's not real so I just puppet him around to live through vicariously in the scenarios I don't want to be a part of myself but find super interesting. It's not anything new, I do the same with my own characters in the stories I write them in, it's part of storytelling, I just use him for a specific type of story for a specfic part of myself.

It's not like we're hurting anybody by shipping him. We're not drastically effecting canon and making him an alloromantic. I've seen plenty of fics that ship him that either make it a QPR or they thoroughly explore the nuances of his asexuality and what subtype of sexuality he is and how he navigates it and I love those fics because they speak to me on a spiritual level. Grayromantic Alastor, demisexual alastor, sex-repulsed but romance-favorable Alastor, sex-repulsed and romance-averse Alastor in a one-sided ship fic, etc they're all so important to me because it helps me live out my own sexuality and romantic orientation and explore myself.

I get it. Not everyone is respectful. Not everyone feels the way I do and use characters in this way. It can suck seeing people just ignore his sexuality when asexuals and aromantics don't get much in terms of screen-time. But you can't control everybody and what work they put out. And trying to censor stuff like that does more harm than good. I just explained why fics involving Alastor are so important to me. They normalize QPRs and aroaces being in relationships. That's probably what pisses me off the fucking most. If we're not allowed to write about aroaces being in relationships or romantic/sexual situations, you put aroaces into a box. A box where every aroace is perceived as sexless and loveless, which just isn't true. A box where aroaces are prudes or infants who can't handle hearing the word "sex". It's just so frustrating. You can be mad at fics that expressly rewrite or stomp on his sexuality, sure. You can't stop them, but you can disapprove of them. But let the rest of us have our fun making the literal devil and TV head man have the hots for a man whose teeth are yellower than the sun, Jesus Christ.

TL;DR: asexuality is a spectrum, I'm aroace and use shipping as a way to explore and express myself and I know I'm not the only one, trying to suppress works where an Aroace character is seen participating in romance or sex can actually be harmful in that it promotes only one idea of what being aroace is, and at the end of the day the character I'm talking about doesn't even exist.

[nonbinary-odo]

honestly like i dont identify as nonbinary anymore now but like yknow back in the day in like middle school into high school when i did identify as nonbinary but wasnt out about it i rlly did identify rlly strongly w odo and think of my identification of him in terms of him occupying a kind of ambiguous space in the gender matrix and how pissed i was that they hooked him up w major kera nerys and how it liked i felt anyway like they masculinized him in relation to kera but maybe thats wrong on a rewatch anymore odo nonbinary ur so real for this fight on comrade

I watched DS9 as a sheltered young person who wasn't yet aware you COULD be different genders. Seeing Odo be awkward in his sense of self and in sexual/romantic situations felt extremely relatable and he was ALWAYS my favorite for unknown reasons to me, I just loved him. When I first watched the show again after IDing as Non Binary and Aro/Ace, I was honestly surprised he never set off the light bulbs more back then lol.

In terms of Kira, I 100% know what you mean and could write so much on how I feel about their relationship. I think the close, strong bond of them was perfect but then they put them in a ~relationship~ and now Odo refers to her to someone else as "the woman [he] loves"? Biting killing he would NOT say that. I really like what they have being in the unspoken parts of it. Kira never minded Odo's quiet and I think making him having to "woo" her cheapens what they mean to each other. Kira Nerys waiting for HIM to make a move? Kira makes ALL the moves, that's her whole character, she would be the one gently making more time to be around him, they aren't the dating type, no matter if the relationship is romantic, platonic, or QPR.

And they SHOULD have played with his gender, girls night with Jadzia who paints his nails and allows him to explore who he IS beyond a fuzzy mirror of Dr Mora

[moonstruckdraws]

✨ARO SPEC AWARENESS WEEK!!✨

THESE PEOPLE EXIST AND ARE BEAUTIFUL & AMAZING! APPRECIATE THEM! RESPECT THEM!

I don't really do the awareness week things cuz I draw during pride month but finding out (learning how to read a bio status that's been in my face every time I open their blog) that @hellishgayliath is aro, I wanted to incorporate them! I know I say I appreciate them a lot but ITS BECAUSE I DO!

This is also a reveal that Luci is aro spec! I am not aromantic myself, but I have done my research into it. However, if I do make any stereotypical or offensive characterizations for Luci, please let me know so I may change that! I find it funny that both Repo & Luci wouldn't know of the labels lgtbqia+ so Luci has no idea what aromantic is lol

Luci spiel incoming

Okok, so I designed Luci in late December. I make characters in my head for fandoms I'm in all the time, but I never draw them out because I never care to. I didn't really consider making a rottmnt oc until Helli dropped their Bao character which is followed when I started making fanart of Helli's sons. I decided, "I have nothing better to do, so why not" and I really like moths, so why not a moth oc?

Seeing Pico & Bao made me really want to put Luci in a relationship, and I had (and still have) a character in mind that I'd pair her with. But the more I drew her and explored her character, I wasn't as sure. Around this time I learned what QPRs (queer platonic relationship) are and the best way I can describe them is that they're like deeper (more-than-platonic-but-not-romantic) soulmates.

This led me into the aro spec rabbit hole (ha, hi Helli) and I learned a lot about aro labels and aromanticism in general, to which some things I didn't know I connected with lol. And I am aware, since it's a spectrum, that some aros are in relationships, single, interested in romance, repulsed, or a mess of all these things.

But I still wasn't sure if I felt putting Luci in some kind of relationship (more towards a QPR) was okay? I haven't said much on Luci's view on relationships and romance, and I'll do that in another post so I'm not writing an essay over here lol. Because I'm aware that some people do go down that route of "Well some aromantics do date, so I can draw this character in a relationship" and no hate though as peeps can do what they want. I just didn't want to do that with Luci.

So really I'm on the fence of the possibility, and if I do, I want to do it in a way that's respectful to aro's with boundaries or dislikes Luci would have if she was in a close relationship. Of course, I could be overthinking this, which is why I shortened this post in the first place lol, but I'm also a paranoid socially anxious person that doesn't want to be offensive especially since my moot is on this spectrum. I will accept any tips or advice if they're offered; I just wanted to yap and blah blah.

Happy Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week :]

[sukifoof]

Ooooh! 8 and 18 for the ask game if you don't mind?

NICE I WAS HOPING FOR 8!!!! tbh in my heart all the characters i like are aro BUT there are some i feel Really strongly about and thats flowey and femt (unsurprising) i feel like. flowey is probably understandable. given his. Everything. but with femt i feel like it just fits with his character. guy who hates "normal" and seems to struggle to bond with anyone and considers himself a freak. also whatever THIS was

"whats ur type" "i dont know i dont CARE just. be funny when ur suffering i guess." i love femt hes SO funny i think flowey and femt are the only characters ever

some other characters i like that i think are aro are haruka kokonose, mahiru shiina (milgram), and mr itto genshin. for haruka i think the fact that he feels so isolated from everyone else and how he gets Weird about the few friendships he has And how he desperately tries to understand what friendship Is is so. ohhh i love him.. and mahiru is just. the obsession with love and her trying to Define love and how she seems to think being in a relationship will fix her somehow. i have a really specific relationship with being aro and these characters just kinda Hit what its like to feel that way as an aro person <3 love them dearly. also i do not have any reasons for itto i just feel it in my heart <3

and 18!! i tend to avoid shipping mostly cuz i guess i dont really care for it?? it doesnt really make sense to me and i much prefer to explore character analysis and how traumatized characters react to those around them. if i Do end up shipping anyone its almost always in qpr way

YUUTA SAKURAI SECTION!!!! i never get to talk about him but this is a PERFECT time to talk about him. everyone watch net juu no susume IMMEDIATELY its one of my most favorite shows and severely underrated. i think yuuta is such an interesting character. so much of his character is him wanting to get closer to people but he has an emotional wall up both because of his parents deaths and because of his Various Past Experiences involving people wanting him romantically and him not at all feeling that way.

i really like how they write his misunderstanding of how hes perceived and that hes convinced that hes going to get in the way of others relationships... thinking about the idea of people wanting to take up as little space as possible because they feel unworthy of being loved and i wanna shake his head and be like NO everyone LIKES YOU SO MUCH!!!

i think his relationship with moriko is really special because theyre the only people they feel they can truly rely on. both of them have been so lonely and i just think a lot about how they both put so much importance on their friendship and partnership it just means a lot to me that the romance aspect feels more like an afterthought to their friendship because i rarely see that... i also really like how this handles the idea of wanting to be seen as Someone Else because firstly i like it in an aro way but also this show is. so good for trans people

i just think a lot about the way he understands his relationships around him and how he hates being lonely and very rarely has people understand him in the way he wants i just love yuuta so much hes one of my most favorite characters <3 on that note i think him and moriko. they are so qpr to me

imagine i have my head in my hands i am desperately begging people watch this show its only 11 episodes i love it so much... thank u for the ask these were fun to answer :)

[pleinedelavie]

a thought exercise (of sorts)

I think a lot of y'all can probably relate to a feeling of discomfort with the popular/Christian model of the afterlife in which people who live in a certain, very specific way are going to go to heaven and all others will end up in hell. The popularity of The Good Place, which interrogates and criticizes this concept, is a testament to this. So let's run with that. (This is a long post and frankly also a bit of a rant but I promise I have a point, please bear with me.)

At least for Americans, we live in a society that buys into this idea pretty wholesale. Almost everyone probably knows some people who are pretty religious, or at least has encountered someone telling them that eventually their sinful life will catch up with them, and they will be in hell. "Go to hell" (and variations thereupon) is a common phrase in our society and the concept shows up fairly often in popular media.

And I think most of us agree that while many of these examples are surface-level harmless, being endlessly confronted by the belief that you are doomed to some horrific end, that the ultimate culmination of existence is this idea that you find horrific, is pretty shitty.

So we start to push away from this idea, at least in our minds. Some of us might try to reinterpret these concepts, mentally redefine how this afterlife works in order to make it line up better with what we're comfortable with. Of course there are lots of other religions and philosophies with different interpretations of the afterlife that give alternative possibilities for what the point of our lives is.

And of course there's the other side, the final belief: maybe there is nothing after this. Some people find a certain comfort or at least logic in the lack of some final reward or punishment for earthly behavior. They don't need that promise of ‘life everlasting’ in order to find life fulfilling, because there's a lot to live for on this earth.

My belief, at least, is that there's nothing wrong with any of this, and if you don't agree you may want to stop reading because you probably won’t connect super well to the point of this post. (Yes, there’s a point, remember? Eventually.)

As mentioned before, the hyperchristianity of American society and culture (at least, I can’t speak to other places) means that anyone trying to stand apart in this matter experiences a lot of pushback, some subtle and some not. There's a view that those who try to reinterpret Christian ideals are doing it wrong, fundamentally violating the faith in an unacceptable fashion. And of course xenophobia is rampant, and those who believe in other religions or none at all are seen as somehow less moral-- and thus, implicitly, less human.

And on the other side... I imagine even those who have made some peace with the idea of no afterlife find the concept of that final end, of simply ceasing to exist, a little scary; personally I think it's terrifying, and I would guess based on  the concept of existential crises that this feeling is pretty common. Especially from a cultural context that's incredibly individualistic, probably because of the values from the same Christian obsession that brings us hell, there's a huge subconscious urge to fear that if we truly are gone when we are dead, that nothing we did had meaning in the first place.

Nevertheless, we believe what we believe, and while we can explore different paths I think that we don't really have a choice in what finally makes sense to us. So we walk that razor edge between the rather oppressive-sounding end society claims we are destined for, and the hysterical alternative it presents to make that end seem like the better option.

Now, maybe I'm just stretching out on a limb here, maybe I have been this entire time, but in my opinion, that description doesn't sound too different from the experience of being aromantic in modern society. To review:

We live in a culture that aggressively promotes something as a fundamental purpose of the human experience that we find repulsive or at least not especially attractive: romance

This concept shows up everywhere, almost ubiquitously present in music and fiction, seeping into language and pretty much omnipresent in public consciousness. We're often presented with the idea that even those who dislike or avoid romantic love are eventually doomed to it, with imagery like cupid literally shooting people with arrows actually considered charming (???), or the tradition of kissing under mistletoe getting brought up whenever two people who look like they might be a ‘good couple’ are vaguely near any hanging plant at a christmas party, or the trope of the aggressive matchmaker friends

The relentless push of this, the insistence that we *will* end up in a romantic relationship or at least experience simply as a result of being human, really sucks for aromantic people. It's upsetting for us to be confronted with it constantly with essentially no warning when we're just out here trying to have a good time. We feel attacked. (I'm using old meme language because this post is depressing to write and I needed to lighten up a little for my own sake, but I'm also 100% serious, it really does feel like an attack sometimes.)

We try to find our own way to be happy, some exploring romantic relationships despite not feeling attraction, or trying to seek fulfillment through different types of relationships such as QPRs, close friendships, family etc.

Some people aren’t looking for that sort of life-defining relationship; they genuinely feel fulfilled by other aspects of life.

(All of these approaches are okay and if you don’t agree kindly fuck off.)

We get a FUCKTON of pushback for this. Aros who come out to their romantic partners are often automatically dumped because they’re perceived as unable to hold up their end of the relationship; even if they genuinely love their SO, they're by default perceived to be 'doing it wrong'. This is especially relevant when the aros has certain boundaries because of their identity (or if they happen to also be ace, though that’s not necessary for this to happen), which to a lot of people makes their relationships fundamentally inferior to a relationship between non aromantic people.

The fucking insistence that *love makes us human uwu* means that those who choose not to participate in romance, or in any sort of life-encompassing interpersonal relationship, are seen as somehow less capable of being fully fulfilled or even just... Less human. If you don’t think this is true I want you to take a good hard look at how many aro/aro-coded characters in media are robots, aliens, villains, young children, or other groups not treated as fully human by the narrative. (I’m reblogging with links to articles about this because that’s apparently the only way to get tumblr to let it show up in the tag. There’s also an interesting movement called voidpunk which i think originated in the aro community that afaik is a response to this dehumanization)

This pervasive cultural drive toward romance also manifests as a sort of... I want to say internalized arophobia, let me know if that's appropriative since it is based off terms used by other groups. I, and probably a lot of other aros regardless of how genuinely proud we also feel, do have a fear that being without romantic connection will leave us unhappy, or worse that we are somehow broken. This feeling is terrifying and it sucks, and the fact that it’s reinforced and probably created by our amatonormative society means that there needs to be a change.

Finally, we are who we are. I'm pretty sure its not a challenging opinion anymore to say that you can't choose who you love, and that means aros are just as valid as any other identity. So I'll restate: we're stuck in a society that says either that who we are is impossible and we're going to end up somewhere we don’t want to be, or that who we are is horrible and will leave us fundamentally unhappy.

(If parts of this sound combative or frustrated, that’s because I am. We are. Sometimes, even often, it feels like society hates the very concept of aromantic people, and most others it feels like we’re just invisible. I personally don’t have the courage to talk about this in real life but all of the frustration has to go somewhere, so...)

I hope that this post helps you relate a little better to the problems that aros face. This post is partially meant for aspec people who want something to relate to, so I'd be really happy if other aros and aspec people weigh in, even/especially if its to point out the places where I'm overgeneralizing or just plain wrong. I'm not any kind of expert on this, it's obviously just my thoughts.

This is even more important because I'd also hope that this gets to non-aspecs and gives you some insight into our experiences with amatonormativity, because we are a pretty small community and if the world is going to get safer for us we need your help. If this post makes sense to you, please share it, because people need to hear it.

I don’t have a solution to the problems presented here, though the staples of this kind of thing are important: include aspecs, in your fiction and your discussions. think before you say something that might erase or dehumanize us, and if an aspec person tells you something you said was hurtful to them, listen. don’t constantly push romance onto people. (specifically @ some allo aces, many/most of you are fine but you know who you are, don’t put romantic stuff in our tags please god why). more generally, it would be really cool to start tagging things as romance or romance mention because some of us are romance repulsed and don’t want to be surprised by that stuff.

(Finally, because this post does talk a lot about religion, I do want to mention that I don’t mean to trivialize or take away from what religious minorities face, or say that our problems are one to one identical. Please let me know if some part of this is offensive because that's not my intention at all.)

TLDR: Since people seem to have trouble understanding how alienated aspec people feel in a society whose values are fundamentally hostile to our existence, here’s an example that might be more relatable.

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Signe

Today’s awesome aro-spec creator is Signe, better known to aro-spec Tumblr as @fluffyllamacorn!

Signe is a busy aroace writer, visual and textile artist! She writes for the Young Avengers, The Shadowhunter Chronicles/Shadowhunters, Hawkeye Comics and New X-Men: Academy fandoms in addition to developing diverse original fiction. You can find her growing collection of fanworks on AO3 under the name FluffyLlamacorn and her gorgeous art at @llamacorn-productions.

She also posts and reblogs fashion and accessories at @clothing-inspiration, and some of her cosplays can be seen throughout this post!

With us Signe talks about her passion for textile arts and how they allowed her to reclaim her femininity, the importance of non-romantic relationships in creative media, the difficulty of writing kissing scenes, and the need for works and discussions that celebrate our aromanticism. Her love of making, crafting and designing just shines through this post, so please let’s give her all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

I just sort of … never cared? I’ve never wanted to get married and have children, and I never really had crushes growing up. I partly figured that was because I was surrounded by assholes who weren’t worth crushing on, but even when I graduated and moved to better schools where I actually had friends, I still didn’t care. I’ve always had a lot of confidence, so I’ve never bothered feeling insecure about not dating. I spent a while identifying as a straight person “who doesn’t care about romance” before eventually identifying with the ace and then aroace identifiers after having known them for a while, but there was never any big moments in the journey that really stand out.

Currently, I see my aromanticism as more important to my identity than my asexuality – being aro is what I do, while being ace is what my body does – but I also don’t really see them as separate. It’s hard to put into words because it requires cementing some stuff that I don’t mind leaving fluid, but while my lack of attraction is a package deal, it’s the lack of romantic attraction that defines my lifestyle the most. I know which I would choose if I had to, but I prefer not having to. That’s the only good thing about the ace discourse: It’s made me very protective of my ace identity again after having let somewhat go of it after I came to identify as aro.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’m the type of person who has a thousand different hobbies and therefore doesn’t have time to actually do any of them. The three I care most about are writing, drawing and textile work.

I’ve always told myself a lot of stories. Walking home from school, I would develop my stories, acting out scenes in my mind and developing huge universes. When I decided to share them with the world, it was initially as comics. I drew a lot, so I had developed the characters’ visual identities along with their personalities. While I’ve switched to planning my stories as books, drawing and writing is still pretty linked in my mind and I can’t imagine creating a character that I don’t know how to draw.

I got into textile work through cosplay, but have spread out into knitting, sewing, embroidery, cross stitch, weaving, crocheting, bobbin lace… Pretty much everything I can get my hands on, which is why I give it such a broad name. (This is part of my too many hobbies deal!) I love everything about textiles, from the look and feel of it, to how many different things can be created out of one simple material. Looking at clothes and knowing not just how it’s been sewn, but also how the fabric was made, is so cool. Creating things from scratch can make me feel like something akin to a god, recreating this corner of the universe as I see fit. A big part of my love for textile work is also reclaiming my femininity in a way that’s so different from the girly girl image I was taught to look down on as a girl. This is a way to enjoy being feminine that doesn’t force me to embrace things I don’t enjoy.

One thing I’ve realized recently is that I love the freedom to design my own work. My cosplays have moved further and further away from canon, from human versions to characters without a firm design or completely redesigning a canon design. On the other hand, I rarely feel the need to sew completely original things, and without the built in deadline of a con, I’m not very likely to get it done. I tend to rarely do the things I can just do whenever, but I’m getting better at that.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

It’s easy to spot in my stories. I have a lot of a-spec characters. The two main characters who were specifically designed to get most of my heart – Shizuka, the shy girl who didn’t know how to make friends, and Diana, the confident girl who’s never cared what anyone thinks of her – both ended up being a-spec even though I created them long before I started identifying as aroace. Shizuka is demi and I don’t know whether it’s sexually and/or romantically or if it even matters. Diana ended up being aroace because I was thinking about her future and my mind nope’d out of the possibility of her ever dating. I also made a conscious choice not to include much romance until I got interested in queer love stories and that sorta fell by the way side. Even then, I try to keep the love stories from being the only defining feature of the stories and the characters involved in them and never to devalue other types of relationship. You will never hear the term “just friends” in my work unless I’m trying to make a point about the person who uses it.

(This is not to pass a value judgement on anyone who uses that expression, but to help normalize language that doesn’t devalue platonic relationships.)

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

The recent anti-a-spec discourse has made me worried about posting about aromantic things too publicly, as aphobic comments and opinions seem way to commonly accepted these days.

Also, writing kissing scenes. What the hell. “And then their mouths squished together for a little while, which apparently made fireworks go off in their brains.” Like. What? Why does society think this is the epitome of every relationship?

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

Building communities about a lack of something is always hard. Once you’ve written the first story about being aro, it can be hard to write the next one, unless you consciously try to write about a different way of being aro-spec. It’s also a hard orientation to include quickly as being single isn’t as clear an indicator as having a romantic partner of the same gender. While I follow a bunch of aro-blogs and I have a bunch of a-spec friends, I wouldn’t say I’m strongly integrated in the a-spec communities on Tumblr.

Part of it is that most content I see is validations that every sort of aro is alright. I see a lot of content aimed at people who feel bad. That’s important, definitely, but I don’t need it. I’ve always known I’m amazing, both independently of and intersecting with my aromantic identity. I’m interested in work that celebrates being aro, work that doesn’t say I’ll be happy “even though” I’m aro, but “while” I’m aro, maybe even “because” I’m aro and don’t need to waste my life on amatonormativity. At the very least, work that spends more than a sentence on reassuring me. I see a lot of content that implies the basic state of an aro-spec person is sad, and I object to that idea.

I have also recently seen a whole lot of posts about QPRs and that’s really cool! I’m happy to see they’re becoming more and more accepted, at least in some circles. I’m less happy to see them become so prominent and so expected that they start feeling like a new shape of amatonormativity. It’s not that bad right now, but I definitely got allo aces saying “at least we can still feel love” vibes from some QPR posts earlier this year. Because here’s the thing: I’m aroace. I won the lottery. I don’t need to define myself by relationships to other people.* I refuse to take another label that sounds like I don’t want friends because of people pushing QPRs to be the new norm. Again, I’m super happy QPRs seem to have become more accepted, just please don’t present them as something every aro-spec person is interested in unless we specifically opt out.

There’s also the question of what kind of aro stories should be told. I mean, as many as possible, obviously, but that’s going to take a while. But the whole deal with being aro-spec is to have less interest in romance, so too many stories that focus on the lack of it become … counterproductive? I think the Jughead comics are pretty perfect in that regard. The main character is aroace and there are several stories that’s hella important to, but mainly it’s just about him going on adventures with his friends.

(P.S. I hate Riverdale. I’ve seen two different Jughead cosplays these last two weekends, but I didn’t dare fangirl, because what if they were based on the wrong version?)

Honestly, my main way of interacting with the a-spec community is befriending people at random and later finding out they’re a-spec. It’s … almost a superpower? It’s pretty great.

* No one needs to define themselves by relationships to other people, but I imagine it’s much easier when you don’t feel the desire to.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

I don’t feel very connected to creative communities, but that’s more because I’m not very good at reaching out and promoting myself unless I know I have exactly what’s being asked for. I mainly stick to one or two people I can bounce ideas off of for my different projects before I post it and hope it finds an audience. It might also be because I’m juggling so many things and don’t spend enough time on the social connections needed to connect with a community.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Feedback, feedback, feedback! I love it! I live on it! Telling me you like X or Y part of my work can keep me floating for days and makes me so much more motivated to keep arting! So please, check out my art and leave a comment and/or share it with your friends/followers, if you like it.

(Also, if anyone has good tips on how to reach a larger audience, let me know.)

Can you share with us something about your current project?

I just finished my newest cosplay, which is Lup from The Adventure Zone in her lich form! I had a lot of fun designing her – the podcast doesn’t have very specific descriptions and the creators encourage fans to come up with their own designs – and got a lot of positive reactions at the con last weekend. I went for a very non-human design, including hiding my face, and added a bunch of fire details to reflect her evocation magic. I would have added more, but then my sewing machine broke in the last second, and I had to finish everything by hand, so I just aimed for the basic version. I’ll be updating her for the next con and will have much more fire with me then. I have yet to finish editing the pictures, but they should be up soon.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

My next project, one I’ve alluded to a couple of times in this profile already, in fact combines all three of my passions. I was considering cosplaying Pixie, one of the underrated students from X-Men, relegated to the background since their series ended, but I kept bumping up against the problem that her uniform was just too … generic to be fun. Besides, what’s the point of cosplaying the pink girl, and then not getting to work with pink fabric?

So I just redesigned her and gave her an individual outfit. And then I decided to redesign all of her teammates. I wanted them all to go together, but still keep an individual feeling, and I achieved that by giving them a rainbow theme when they’re together. Obviously, the next stop was figuring out a story for that to take place in, of which I’ve posted the first chapter. The idea is that they get out in their bright colors and visibly help everyday people with everyday problems to stop people from hating and fearing mutants and maybe actually making a positive change, unlike all of the superhero battles that don’t get anyone anywhere.

The project has three parts: Individual drawings for every member where I develop their outfits further, chapters of fic describing their adventures and a cosplay that I aim to finish for Genki in August, the next big con in Denmark.