Crab Time Time For Crab

Meet one of our guest page artists - Caly!

Am I aromantic or does the “fun” mutual teasing, the unspoken rules of dating, the ungraspable social game of it all feel terrifying, unintuitive, repulsive, prohibiting?

Am I aromantic, or are the steps just out of order for me?

I do love. Deeply, soul crushingly, intensely, earth-shakingly. I write poetry for my loves, enjoy holding hands with them, sharing my soul with them.

I enjoy living with them, cooking meals together, taking our kid/s to the park together, running errands together. It feels like home.

Am I aromantic if the only kind of love I create feels more like family than fireworks?

Companionship, safety, friendship to the max, affection, maybe even sex (though never necessary), but… somehow it just seems different, queerer, than how people describe their romances.

I do not know where best friend ends and lover begins, if there even is a difference. People insist there is. I have felt euphoria in the development of such friendships, so… are all my friends my lovers? Are my lovers all my friends? We all love each other, but not in the way that’s scary to tell somebody. “Don’t say I love you yet, it’s too early” Scuse you, I DO love them and I WILL tell them, every time I feel it; the ‘I Love You’ will just grow deeper and richer over time, like a plant stretching roots down deep.

But somehow… when I say that, people say that’s different than romance. Weirder.

Maybe the categories are just too narrow for the breadth of the human experience.

Or maybe I’m just aromantic.

The year is 2002, a villain robs the restaurant you manage, and you call the local hero team, who arrive within 20 minutes. There's a brief, professional fight with a back and forth that almost seems like a therapy session, before the villain is captured. Because of circumstantial political tides they're immediately sent to the birdcage, despite it being a first offence.

The year is 2012, villains rob the grocery store that you work at, and you wearily call the PRT, the heroes arriving 50 minutes later because most of them have been killed in endbringer fights. The fight is bloody and quick, with all banter from either side taking the form of growled threats. Upon being brought back to the phq all of the villains are immediately offered plea deals to become probationary heroes.

More and more villains appear and it stops being novel and starts becoming a real problem. Tinkers stop building flashy but easily-defeated mechs and start peddling supercocaine that gets you twice as high as regular coke and kills you three times as fast. A villain wearing a goofy, flashy, colorful costume goes on a killing spree until heroes who've never had to fight to kill eventually stop him. Heartbreaker appears. Hell, human masters as a whole are a nightmare.