romance is overrated

sexuality: aro

gender: aro

eye color: aro

religion: aro

nationality: aro

(I am sorry this is so late, this is exam week for me and I am exceptionally tired.)

So, about a year ago (more or less), I started a prompt meme on AO3, called “Gen and Aro Prompts”, to encourage people to write more gen stories, and/or stories involving aro-spec characters.

It’s still open, anyone can still contribute, and if you want to write something, that would be really, really awesome. (Especially for those people who want someone to help write out their aro headcanons, but no one who knows the fandom has stumbled over it yet.)

If you want to submit a prompt, and maybe hope someone interested stumbles over it, please do!

So far, there’s 31 prompts, and 26 works.

Not all of those works include explicitely aro characters, but 23 out of 26 (if I counted correctly) means that fics featuring aro characters are by far in the majority.

There’s fics exploring aromanticism in worlds with soulmates, fics exploring certain characters as aromantic, people-coming-out-fics…

Some of my favourites (because there’s too many of them, I can’t list them all):

Of Arrows and Soulmates - the oldest fic in the collection, predating the prompt meme, featuring the Hawkeyes as platonic soulmates. Kind of light-hearted and nice and you can feel the relief when both realize they’re platonic soulmates?

Immortality - I adore how comfy Pidge gets to be with being aro… , and also that this was written in response to one of my prompts; features a Pidge without a soulmate where people start ageing when they meet theirs.

Flingerlings - featuring aro Luna and Harry, and one of my favourite rejections of amatonormativity. Also starring Snape’s corpse, and the rejection of amatonormativity includes Snape’s actions, and just - go read it.

Pangur Bán and Me - Hermione and Millicent Bulstrode both get to be aro immortal friends. It’s awesome. Also, Millicent has an immortal cat. I am probably not very good at descriptions.

The Only One They Ever Reared - Sirius and Remus have to watch tiny!Harry while his parents are away. 

Mattie vs Amatonormativity - Mattie (from the Art of Escaping) discovers the concept of being aro. And aro-allo. I really just… like this kind of fic, even if I have no idea about the fandom?

We Won’t Ever Say Goodbye - another world where people don’t start ageing until meeting their soulmates, and even more non-soulmated aros - this time, it’s Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton and Pepper Potts from the MCU. This is one of several fics I start reading when being surrounded by romance gets to be too much.

Getting Lost With You (600800 Seconds From Valentine’s Day) - where Lavender is an aro robot, and her inner monologue is awesome. Also has a ranty author’s note I’m really fond of. (I should probably comment on it, finally…)

(I also wrote a fic with an aro Luna Lovegood “Romantic Love and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks (Through the Years)”, that is… at least 70% me projecting my experiences growing up onto her and mixing in some bits I heard from other people about them growing up? At least some people didn’t find that unenjoyable.)

I… haven’t really kept up with the newer fics, because uni, and I left out a lot of good ones because this post was starting to get too long, but - yeah. 

There’s quite something there already, and I really would like for a lot of those fics to get more comments and kudos, and to just see more fics in general.

(Also, question to the mods of this blog: Can I just go and submit aro fic that gets submitted to the prompt meme to you throughout the year?)

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You need to learn to separate your idea of aro and ace people from the Discourse. Let me break it down for you:

1. Being an inclusionist does not automatically absolve you of all aphobia. You can be an inclusionist and still perpetuate anti-aspec ideas and reblog anti-aspec dogwhistles. I see fellow “inclusionists” do this all the time. Exclusionism isn’t the only problem facing aspec people, or else we wouldn’t have been asking for support in the first place (which, if you must know, is why the discourse started anyway–we weren’t being quiet anymore–but I digress).

2. On the same note, aspec people’s existence does not boil down to discourse. We are not just an Opinion, and asking you to support us, acknowledge us, and be conscious of aphobia is NOT the same thing as asking you to make a discourse blog, follow discourse blogs, engage with discourse posts, or argue with exclusionists on our behalf. If an aspec person asks you to be more supportive and you tell them not to drag you into discourse, that shows us that you only see our existence as a discourse topic and that we cannot trust you, even if you claim to be our ally.

3. Jokes about the discourse aren’t funny if they aren’t coming from aspecs. We don’t see it as a Tired Topic or some Funny Joke On Tumblr That Went Too Far. It’s not funny to us, and it shouldn’t be funny to you.

4. Engaging with the discourse on our behalf doesn’t make you a hero. Especially if you speak over us and don’t let us correct you when you misuse our terminology or misrepresent us. I see inclusionists being arophobic or forgetting that aros exist all the time and that’s the tea.

5. If you claim you ‘support aspec people but are an exclusionist’ or ‘support aspec people but are neutral/unsure of where you stand on the discourse’ you don’t actually support us, you are not our ally, and we do not trust you. I block people who say this.

psychotic aros? positively amazing!

autistic aros? absolutely awesome!

schizo-spec aros? utterly splendid!

dissociative aros? delightfully excellent!

sociopathic and psychopathic aros? valid and wonderful!

empathic aros? stupendously cool!

attention deficit aros? smashingly marvelous

Me: wow this is really nice

Story: but! It turns out one if their friends was actually their soulmate so all that character development is thrown out the window. And being in a relationship is the best thing that ever happened to them!

Me:

All nb aros killed god with their bare hands

Romantic attraction? Nonexistent.

Reality? Collapsing.

Aromantic-spectrum Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy (AUREA) is happy to announce the website - aromanticism.org - we’ve been working on has been launched! We assemble general information and community updates. The website includes FAQ, vocabulary, research, news feed, online resources, links to in-person groups, and printable educational materials. Our aim is also to be a contact point for researchers and media looking to explore the aromantic experiences.

I haven’t seen any of these for alloaros so I decided to make my own! You can rb if you aren’t alloaro but please put somewhere on your reblog that this is for your alloaro followers. Rebloggers have the right to not answer any questions they aren’t comfortable with.

1. Favorite thing about being alloaro

2. Green or gold?

3. Favorite alloaro flag?

4. Have any alloaro headcanons?

5. Are you interested in any sort of relationship?

6. Favorite alloaro symbol, or something you think should be an alloaro symbol

7. A song thar you relate to in terms of being an alloaro

8. What type of representation do you want to see of alloaros in media?

9. Do you feel your gender identity influences how you think about your alloaro-ness?

10. [Blank] is better than amatanormativity

11. Are you out to anyone as alloaro? Do you want to come out as alloaro to anyone?

12. Something you wish people who aren’t alloaro understood about our community

13. Do you have any advice for younger alloaros/people who havent ID’d as alloaro for a long time?

14. What do you want to see more of in the alloaro community?

She doesn’t tell them that the idea of sex is exciting, and the idea of making love makes her stomach curdle with confused repulsion.

They tell her that to desire is wrong, that to know the boundaries and curves of her own body is sinful, to know another in this way is cheap. To feel love is the only way to feel pleasure.

She grows up uncomfortable in her skin. She doesn’t like to be touched by others; they told her affection is the mark of romance. She doesn’t like to be friends with boys; they told her boys and girls can never be just friends.

She never talks about her own desires. As her friends grow up they talk about their crushes, how cute they are; “aren’t they just so attractive?” She doesn’t know how to answer. She doesn’t know how to define this thing called attraction. The give you butterflies, they tell her, you just want to be around them. You feel all shakey when you talk to them.

She never feels this. But she knows she feels something. Something that lies within the silences of her friends words, in the bitten lips and fluttering gazes.

Even after she finds the word for the thing that she is not, she struggles to define what she is.

They tell her that this part of herself is secondary. It doesn’t matter in the face of her Not. To Have is to be normal, these things are only worth defining if you Have Not.

Is it really normal? She thinks, To struggle with this thing that others seem to find so comfortable.

Sometimes it seems like she has two parts of a puzzle living within her, wholly incompatible and forced to fit together anyway. A Frankenstein’s monster of this thing they call attraction.

[ID: a person in a quoiro shirt asks a person in an aro shirt, “Hey, what does romantic attraction feel like?” The person in the aro shirt responds, “Ask me that again and look me in my eyes.”]