#aroculture

Some Aro Songs! I had fun with the graphic design :) 

Will Jay - Never Been In Love

This song is pretty popular amongst the aro community, I think. Will Jay is a really talented singer and I listen to him normally but I appreciate this catchy up beat denial of romantic culture. There’s a lot of sadness caused by others and culture when we identify as aro, but he presents a happiness in not falling in love. 

bülow - Not A Love Song

This song describes the perspective of an aroallo. Not every aro is asexual by default. I also feel this song is good beyond aromantic culture. Because fuck thinking sex is a sin. People both shame sex and then call people broken for not wanting sex or feeling sexual attraction. And at the end of the day, fuck off. It’s not your business whether people have sex or not.

Danko Jones - Don’t Fall In Love

This song is an upbeat and loud song, calling love bullshit. 

Dearlie - For Me

This song is about asexuality, but works as an aromantic, or aroace song! 

Jetty Bones - No Lover

Not everyone needs a lover, sometimes a friend is more than enough. 

Mike FonzaRelli Roberts - Aromantic 

This aro song is a good description of what aromanticism is. 

NIIC - I Don’t Need Love 

Just another cool song discussing how we don’t need love :) !

Stealth - I Don’t Need Your Love 

This song feels very aro coded to me. I think a lot of aro coded things can be seen as romance repulsed alloromantics or people who talk about the heartbreaks of love. Though we aren’t the same as them and the distinction is important, it’s nice to have those aro vibes.

The Avett Brothers - Pretend Love

What it feels like to be an aro and be in a relationship, but you’re faking the love.

Mother Mother - Alone and Sublime

My favorite band :))) The song is aro coded, especially the line “I wonder, did they make me right? Aren't I supposed to wanna fight for love”

Max Lizanich - Aromantic Moodboard

A lovely aro song about what it feels to be aro.

FluffyEnderBug - Can We Just Be Friends?

This one is real obscure so I linked it :) ! It’s an aromantic version of the phrase “can we just be friends?”.

Aromantic - Lee Porteous

Also slightly unknown. Just a soft and gentle song about someone discovering they’re aro.

This playlist was fun for me to make! I hope you liked it and feel free to share more songs below :)

Part 9 - we’ve reached the end folks. This has been a (longer than expected) journey but I’m so grateful I had the chance to share it with all of you. I know there are a lot more of you than the last time I posted haha, so hi and welcome to my comics lol 🥰 Ive been dreaming of having some aro stickers to help express my identity in run ways, so I decided to take matters into my own hands last week. I figured I’d share it as a DIY freebie (personal use only) since I know how frustrating it is to ship internationally 💚 Please, if you like the stickers, share this post!! It really helps my account :) also if any of you do end up printing some out please tag me If you post them!! I’d love to see 👀 The link to the stickers: /EDIT: link is now in bio, was broken here

Author’s Note: The link is in my Carrd, but you can also get the stickers here.

P.S: My health has been in somewhat of a questionable state these past few weeks - nothing serious, dw, but neurologically I have a few concerns that are taking a while to go through the medical system 😢 I’m really struggling to keep up with school because of it. I am like 85% done the next batch of comics, so hopefully I can tide this account over until December (exams done). But in the case I cannot, I hope y’all take care (especially those of you in the states rn) and we’ll see where things take us. 💚💚💚

[Image Description: 

Slide 1: Celia holds the submission bowl in front of her. “Even though we’re young, I feel our community is vibrant and beautiful”

Slide 2: Celia standing in holding a cacti, surrounded by elements shown in previous parts of the comic series: A barn own gryphon, a frog, a few more cacti/succulents and a quiver of arrows. “I think aro culture is pretty neat.”

Slide 3: Title slide. Text says “Bonus”

Slide 4: An assortment of stickers, including hearts, flags, and circular badges with aromantic flags. A few gryphon stickers as well. Text: “Free Stickers! Link to the stickersheet in the description! Personal use only [heart symbol].” 

So, as me and my good aro/ace friend were talking about squishing and stuff, we found ourselves wondering - is there any way to say “I ship you guys” but platonically?

We came to a realization that no, there's not, or at least not one we know about. So we may, or may not, created a term for that.

It's plant.

And planting. And person shipped platonically is plant/seedling (?). And you water the plants when you spend time with the other person. And the plant has grown when you establish strong friendship. And you are ready for harvest when you start a QPR. And the one shipping the two/or more is planter.

And I think that's beautiful.

Part 7 - I have a convoluted relationship with romance in fiction. When I was very young I absolutely hated it, and as I got older I became fascinated because I wanted to UNDERSTAND it (kind of like how people feel about space, or the deep sea). In recent years, it’s been a phase of only reading things that were about (lgbtq+) romance, but I’m coming out of it now. I guess what I really wanted was the opportunity for great character development and drama, but as media becomes more diverse (and I write my own stories) I can find what I’m looking for in other genres ☺️ And yeah, no shade to the guy who was calling me in the last slide. He wasn’t creepy about it or anything, it was more of a personal distaste for being thought of in a romantic way 😖

[Image Description:

Slide 1: Title slide. Text reads: “#4B: Being cool with romance in fiction, but in real life … not so much.”

Slide 2: Celia lying on the ground, watching a drama on her laptop. From the screen, speech bubbles emerge describing the scene. One character says: “I can’t stop thinking of you …” and the other responds “... me too ...”. Celia is very excited and says “ooooo”. A note pointing to her: “absolutely fascinated by the drama”. 

Slide 3: Caption at top: “me, age 16, calling a friend”

Part 3 - other arospec symbols I didn’t get to in part 2. So schools getting really busy (or maybe I’m just struggling b/c I need actual academic accommodations that I’m not getting rn 🙃) and I’m going to have to split the rest of the comic up into smaller pieces to keep the update schedule 😢 I hope that’s okay!!! I am working the hardest I can in top of school to keep things going, but I need to make sure I’m sleeping/taking care of my health too 💚 Also I was originally going to draw the normal gryphon, but then I saw a barn owl one and. I just couldn’t resist!!! They are SO CUTE 😭😭😭

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yes, I know I goofed on the ring drawing!!! It’s worn on the left middle finger, not the right! 

[Image Descriptions:

Slide 1: Celia winks, pointing up at drawings of a bow and arrow, and a quiver of arrows. She says: “I think we like bows and AROs”Scrawled on the side is a note that says: “(and apparently, in the case of this aro, bad puns)”

Slide 2: A piece of paper and a pencil. The note at the top of the paper reads: “Our patron animals:” Below are drawings of a barn own gryphon and a frog. The barn own gryphon holds an aro POC flag. 

Slide 3:  Text reads: “I’ve been told by a lot of y’all that garlic bread is our signature food (which I love).”

Drawing shows Celia delighted in eating a piece of garlic bread. On the table in front of her as well are mint chocolate chip ice cream and a pizza. Arrows pointing to the latter food items are noted “ice cream + pizza suggested on arocalypse”

Part 6 - the short updates continue 😭😅 I truly believe this one deserves an entire comic (or more) to cover the ways in which romantic relationships are confusing haha. I tried my best to sum it up tho. I feel like I get romantic relationships in theory, and why people get flustered and catch feelings and all that, but when I see it happen irl I’m always like 🧐🤨🤔 ???? That’s just a person, why would you feel that nervous or even start blushing? Like I guess people are maybe sort of (not really) attractive sometimes, but in the end aren’t all people just people??? But yeah that’s the clueless gray-aro part of me talking. How do y’all feel about relationships and crushes (as a general whole)? Do you understand them??

[Image Description:

Slide 1: Title slide. Text reads: “#4A: Being confused about crushes and relationships”

Slide 2: Celia holding a submission card. She says: “There’s so much I could say for this one. It could be a comic series by itself. But for me, though, I think this sums it up.”

Part 2 - There were so many responses 😭 thank u all so much!! Like I said in the slides, I’ll be covering the submissions as much as possible for this comic, but there were a couple of topics y’all brought up I had already planned for a full length comic on. I figured it would be best to leave those for later - it will definitely be covered!! For the last slide, this was the post I had seen (it was originally posted by tumblr user everydayatleast). I personally love cacti so much, I 3000% agree and want cacti to be an aro symbol!!! 💚

[Image Descriptions:

Panel 1: “So I asked y’all what you think aro culture is -”

Celia standing with her left hand on her hip looking to the camera from a side angle

Panel 2: “And oh boy did I get a lot of responses!”

Celia smiling as she stands behind a table with a glass bowl of questions papers in it

Panel 3: “I found that in general, the responses fit into five categories - as shown above.”

Celia standing in front of a projector screen with the 5 categories listed:

General Symbols

Non-Romantic Bonds

Relationship Advice Skills

Feelings about Romance

How People Treat You

Panel 4:  Celia points at the projector screen/whiteboard, “Also, if your submission isn’t here - there’ll be a future comic on the subject)”

Panel 5: Celia reading one of the submission bowl on a piece of paper

“So first off, in the category of general symbols of aromanticism:”

Panel 6:  “The colour green, and by some extension, a love for nature is part of the aromantic community”

Plants a flower, small succulent, and yellow roses In pots in front of a green background.

Panel 7: Celia holding a cacti, placing it down 

“I’ve seen some* say that cacti in particular are aro culture.” (a note writtne: tumblr post by everydayatleast)

Text surrounding the cacti “I luv u but respect my boundaries”

“Our need r fulfilled differently (but we still thrive on care and love)”