An Aro Ghost Being Aro (and having Adhd)

But it's not exactly those that get pointed to us from others as representation for aroallos, you know? What we still get lumped together with for representation are Todds, Liliths and Alastors. Like i lowkey wish someone with a few braincells would actually put two and two together and say Barney Stinson from How I met your Mother.

Like yes, it's fucking Corporate Human Garbage Barney Stinson and that show is amatonormative and also aro- and a bit transphobic and full of another ton of hindsight issues.

But Barney Stinson at least fits with the basic requirements of being an aroallo character, which is 1st, he feels sexual attraction (and regularly fucks) and 2nd he rarely feels romantic attraction or even comfortable with being forced into a romantic role, and the few times he does are under ridiculously specific circumstances, that HE has to frame to HIMSELF in that single life player lense to navigate and make sense of it and even then it only worked with the most accidentially aro coded of aro coded women on the show, Robin Scherbatsky. Like these two were okay with just sex and never having to be romantic about it. It was everyone else around them that had a problem with it, because it wasn't explicitly romantic or romantic enough.

Pick.

Two-hundred eighty-seven spiders (fair size 10cm end of leg to end of opposing leg (I have a specific one in mind)) in your pants, right now

Or

two flies that never land, you can't catch, are always buzzing in your ear, you never get used to the noise, and you never get comfortable with their presence

Like yeah, of that size it's gonna be a frightening moment to go through along with a sensory nightmare of at least 800 legs trying to get OUT of your pants, but as long as those ain't to humans venemous large spiders, it's all right, and even then I think you can kinda call a poison or venom callcenter or something to get help/ask what the best antidote for you would be right now that may be somewhere in your house.

And the very worst case scenario: you might become spiderman.

...

Pedestrian traffic lights

Starting off with the difference between formerly Eastern German traffic lights (upper images) and formerly Western German traffic lights (lower images):

The city of Erfurt had some additions, like an umbrella or a heart:

Same sex love in Marburg (upper image) and Frankfurt (lower image):

Traffic light lady in Bremen:

Karl Marx light in Trier:

Face of Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal:

Elvis in Friedberg (Hessen):

A sparrow (for the Golden Sparrow film awards) in Gera:

Winemaker in Bad Dürkenheim:

Mainzelmännchen (mascot of the public broadcasting service ZDF) in Mainz:

Otto Waalkes (German Comedian) in Emden:

Town musicians of Bremen in Bremen:

A miner in Pirmasens, Rheinland-Pfalz:

Bishop in Fulda:

Source: Saarbrücker Zeitung

ich bin immer ein falsches wort davon entfernt von all den leuten erschossen zu werden die mich erträglich finden

Notes:

Red flags: Unbelievable nature you've never seen before!, no external source cited, low image quality could be hiding AI artifacts, lacks scientific name for plant, OP is an aesthetic blog (no offense, I see you credit most of the artists you post, OP <3).

Green flags: Common name of the tree provided (although the leaves don't look like any olive tree I've ever seen).

Reverse image searches and citation trails all seem to lead back to now-deleted Reddit posts. Google Images says it's this one in r/NatureIsFuckingLit, and TinEye says it's this one in r/interestingasfuck. Both were posted back in 2020. This is important because the rise of AI images was in 2022.

People in the comments of places this image is posted throw around botanical terms like "dichotomous branching" [branches split into two at the nodes] and "divaricated" [branches grow far apart from each other], which are cool, but don't tell me what the tree is.

Searching up "Black Olive" on iNaturalist finally got me some answers, and it turns out that YES. This is a real tree! This tree is a Dwarf Black Olive (Terminalia molinetii, Formerly Bucida spinosa). The above photos are some particularly nicely framed shots of a tree with particularly small leaves, which really highlights the branching structure. I really wish we knew the photographer's name. Here are some more photos of the same species:

Terminalia molinetii by jriveracruz50 on iNaturalist, posted under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

This tree is native to Southern Mexico, Belize, the southern tip of Florida, and Cuba. Dwarf Black Olives are completely unrelated to Olive trees in the Olea genus that I'm more familiar with (the former is in Order Myrtales [Myrtles, Evening Primroses, and Allies], and the latter is in Order Lamiales [Mints, Plantains, Olives, and Allies]).

The Representation Compass:

anyways I think I should just add following to the definition both "Good"s and "Bad"s here:

Minority Good: It's accurate enough to who they are and their lived experiences that they can see themselves reflected in that character. Especially if said representation character hasn't been sparingly or unnecessarily cut short. Easier to achieve the more rep characters of that minority group exist in the story in the first place.

Minority Bad: Usually the rep character is a strawman or a stereotype used to either berate or be rhetorically weaponized against the minorty in question. Point is it neither represents the minority group at all, nor does it have a positive impact on it.

Mainstream Good: Little to no discomfort is being felt by the majority of readers or viewers when experiencing the minority representation character. Lack of discomfort does however only means lack of discomfort and can even mean a very boring rep character that is just there being the rep character, without challenging any preconceived notions of the mainstream audience.

Mainstream Bad: Opposite of the above. Can be because the rep character has legit been made by a nazi or bigot who straight up doesn't want the minority group to exist, so the goal is all to make sure that representation automatically equals discomfort in the mind of the mainstream. However, discomfort can also mean getting called out on very common behaviors and interactions with the minority group or getting confronted with common minority experiences that the mainstream usually just doesn't consider their part in and impact of. While both possibilities may look the same to the average well meaning mainstream audience, leading to lots of confusion and infighting + false accusations and all that fun controversy stuff, for media literacy and activism + allyship purposes it's usually important to be able to sit with me

Mainstream Bad: Opposite of the above. Can be because the rep character has legit been made by a nazi or bigot who straight up doesn't want the minority group to exist, so the goal is all to make sure that representation automatically equals discomfort in the mind of the mainstream. However, discomfort can also mean getting called out on very common behaviors and interactions with the minority group or getting confronted with common minority experiences that the mainstream usually just doesn't consider their part in and impact of. While both possibilities may look the same to the average well meaning mainstream audience, leading to lots of confusion and infighting + false accusations and all that fun controversy stuff, for media literacy and activism + allyship purposes it's usually important to be able to sit with media that makes one feel uncomfortable. How else would one learn to be able to differentiate the nazi and bigoted caricatures + propaganda from the actual lived authentic realities of said minority groups in question? How else do you want to be able to understand your potential friend's troubles and problems and therefore be able to help them with that, if you're not even willing to sit in discomfort for a little bit to think and learn?