#this is about aromanticism btw

[vulpinesaint]

one of my things with love is that i think it's probably like colors. yeah we have a thing that we all sort of agree is red. but we have no way to know if other people see red the same way as us. your red could be totally different from mine and we would never know because it has functionally the same relation to all of us and so we all just call it red. i have no way of knowing if anyone else on earth feels love the exact same way in which i do and in fact i think most people probably don't...

[sprnklersplashes]

"this character isn't aro they're-"

"this character can't be aro because-"

too late. I've already hit them with my aromantification beam.

[lemonycranberries]

i love being aro so fucking much

[gay-otlc]

Happy pride month aros

[anotherqueersnailowner]

my (admittedly lackluster) attempts at finding a queerplatonic partner have turned out to be fruitless (pun intended) endeavors so I've decided to turn to our lovely friend the Internet in search of a fellow queer little freak to be my partner

[aq2003]

ten x rose love loses moodboard - space girl by frances forever // doctor who (2005) 2x03 doomsday // why losing rose was so devastating on doctor who, according to david tennant // twitter user arojotaro // tumblr user heartless-aro // against the kitchen floor by will wood // doctor who (2005) 4x13 journey's end // julie gardner in the journey's end dw confidential // a screenshot of my discord messages

[omegalomania]

What are some of your favorite aro-/ace-coded fob lyrics?

oh fuck yes a little bowl of seeds just for me

boycott love from disloyal order of water buffaloes is a personal favorite of mine. its a lyric i really really want tattooed at some point. that's not the only lyric i latch onto from an aro perspective but it's probably the biggest one

basically the entirety of it's hard to say "i do" when i don't but a special mention goes to you are appealing to emotions that i simply do not have as well as the only ring i want buried with me are the ones around my eyes

it's true romance is dead / i shot it in the chest and in the head from the music or the misery is also a favorite of mine, also just that whole song in general

i thought i loved you but it was just how you looked in the light in hum hallelujah resonates with a lot of queer folks i've found, and it's no different for me

same goes for it's a strange way of saying that i know i'm supposed to love you from g.i.n.a.s.f.s.

i'm outside the door, invite me in / so we can go back and play pretend from alone together brings me back to when i was trying to perform heteronormativity/amatonormativity even if it was making me miserable

i also hold to a very similar vibe with she said "i love you 'till i don't" / i am just playing house, no idea what i'm doing now from sunshine riptide and also most of burna boy's verse, frankly. i fell in love but i didn't fall down and feel like i'm bulletproof, baby in particular

american beauty/american psycho, particularly the first verse. i think i fell in love again / maybe i just took too much cough medicine

golden is a big one for queer folks in general i've found. the chorus especially hits hard from an aro and/or ace reading. and i saw god cry in the reflection of my enemies / and all the lovers with no time for me

i've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says you should shut your mouth is a heavy song no matter how you slice it. but that chorus gets to me in particular: we can fake it for the airwaves / force our smiles, baby, half-dead / from comparing myself to everyone else around me

the kids aren't alright reads to me as one big anthem for platonic love above anything romantic, which resonates super hard with me. the second verse has a lot of good lines that i latch onto from an aroace lens too. your love is anemic and i can't believe / that you couldn't see it coming from me

pretty much the whole chorus of HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON'T does it for me, and those verses have got some good aroallo vibes too! i never really feel a thing... confidants but never friends...

the whole of fake out is a gimme. that chorus rings real true. starts with love is in the air, i just gotta find a window to break out and finishing with but it was all a fake-out

i've got all this ringing in my ears and none on my fingers is one that has another highly applicable title but the whole refrain of the truth hurts worse / than anything i could bring myself to do to you paired with the one-two punch of that second verse REALLY gets under my skin

and of course, the culminating one: you are what you love, not who loves you from save rock and roll. obviously there are a LOT of ways to read that line

there are a couple other songs i latch onto - wilson (expensive mistakes); a little less "sixteen candles", a little more "touch me"; the (after) life of the party to name a few - but the ones listed above are the big lyrics that resonate with me on a personal level

just in general i have a shitton of fob over on my aro playlist (which doubles as a general aroace/queer playlist but has a lot of emphasis on aromanticism) in case i forgot to mention anything but like i said those are the big ones

[eosofspades]

also love aroaceness love being aroacespec but i need to vent for a sec, realizing im on the aro spectrum and queering my ideas about how relationships can be has fucking eviscerated my ability to write romance. nearly every one i try to write ends up being more queerplatonic and suuuper not traditionally romantic (in most cases you can't even really call it that), and even when it doesn't, i get totally lost trying to write the attraction bc - i can't describe it as "wanting to be more," bc romance isn't inherently better/more fulfilling than platonic relationships, i think an actual romantic relationship is already just a best friend with different intimacy, but you can't boil it down to JUST that, bc then that's physical/sexual attraction which is a whole third thing, and anyway friends can kiss and sleep together perfectly platonically, and what even IS the difference between platonic and romantic anyway? like yeah my romance writing when i was 12 was a little more shallow but at least it was ROMANCE. please its so dark in here

[aweirdbugcreature]

Blue flag basically

[aroanthy]

hi!! i know u talk a lot about aromanticism a lot on here, but i don’t think i’ve ever seen u talk about aromantic anthy. would u mind discussing/elaborating on it or linking to a post where u do because i’m very curious!!

i got a similar ask half a year ago or something ridiculous like that on my main blog, but i’d like to really do justice to my url right now and explain it in more concrete terms.

i will say, it’s important to bear in mind that this reading of anthy’s character is very much informed by my own experiences, and a lot of those experiences are ones im not keen to talk in depth about. but you know. let’s make some nebulous gestures towards ideas of being traumatised, being autistic, struggling to meaningfully connect with others and honestly not really wanting to do such because of how they treat you.

like ive previously said, an aromantic perspective on the world would, i think, really benefit anthy. when youve lived your whole life experiencing violence at the hands of these patriarchal structures, of which romance is absolutely one, it’s kinda like. damn. im uncomfortable buying into those ideas.

anthy also has this lovely line in ep 19 where she says to utena ‘romance either happens or it doesn’t’ and it’s just sooooooo. so very interesting to me, actually, that anthy would say something so black and white about ‘romance’, a topic that anthy knows better than a lot of rgu characters is hopelessly confused and arbitrary and often enabling violence. and utena (fellow aromantic gaybo) says 'yeah, i know, but...'. these simplifications, these elisions. what is and isn't articulated. but what? maybe things are much more complicated than we'd like to think.

anyway enough of that tangent. one thing i as a trans and aromantic person always return to when discussing trans and aromantic readings of characters/texts more broadly is that there's no singular piece of evidence that can really cement these readings as Undeniable. it's like. okay. there's a critique of romance as a patriarchal structure in revolutionary girl utena. there's an ambiguity about anthy's feelings towards characters like utena, where there is clearly a queer connection but it takes shape in unconventional and complex ways. me, i'm aromantic, i see all of these pieces and i go oh well that's because she's an aromantic lesbian. you know, there's plenty of little moments i can evidence but those moments can be used to argue for an alloromantic lesbian anthy too. romance is a very arbitrary thing and i think everyone should take their own approach to it unapologetically. of course, mine is that it's hellish and i want nothing to do with it, but im just one guy. and im okay with that. i feel strongly about this reading and it is personal, and id be dishonest to say otherwise, but i do also find that it's well-evidenced in the text. as one of my lecturers once said, don't worry about authorial intent, it isn't real <3

[theshalesky]

I don't want love to be the point. If anything, i want it to be the starting point.

So many stories have at least a romance subplot. A plotline revolving around love - love being the goal, whether the characters reach it in the end or not. Love being the moral of the story. Love being the angle at which the world is perceived. Even when it's a tragic breakup story, the story is still about love. I'm tired of that.

I want to see characters living their story despite love. I want characters to fall in love at the beginning, but then things happen in their life, and they realize they've slowly fallen out of love for no apparent reason. I'm sick of love being that all-encompassing force that survives in all circumstances. I want love to mean nothing. To be there, but be pointless, to simply matter less than other things in the world. When a character asks "Why don't you love me?", i want the other to reply "Why do you love me?", because this love is merely a facet of both characters' personal issues. I want them to continue their story, knowing who loves whom and who doesn't love whom, and having to work with it. I wish for once, love wasn't seen as a wonderful thing, but instead talked about in a neutral way. Characters loving someone but not caring about that love. Characters loving someone but slowly forgetting about that person. Characters loving someone but knowing their love won't matter. Characters loving someone but understanding they can't give that person what they need. Characters loving someone but this love being overshadowed by all the other ways in which they care about that person. I want love to be anything, anything but the point.

[lovefromsamwinchester]

I wish that certain fandoms understood the depth and complexity of what the aromantic experience is. I hate having to explain that not everyone loves the same, or even loves at all.

why can't you educate yourself instead of attacking and shaming others?

[exaltior-a]

You ever get soured on a headcanon that you literally have just because people are stupid about it.

[normystical]

oh don't mind me just watching a less hot version of rgb get popular and posted everywhere

[trash-bin-ary]

It sucks when you’re in a can’t formulate a sentence right mood and someone says something that you want to respond to but you can’t