Ghifin's Headspace

Back to the Future (1985)

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

It is, by any metric, a small country masquerading as a city.

It governs more lives and more wealth than most nations. If democratic socialism — housing reform, public banking, equitable taxation — functions here, it obliterates the myth that such governance can’t work at scale. The fear isn’t ideological. It’s empirical. Because if Mamdani can keep the lights on, reduce homelessness, and maintain economic growth without catering to Wall Street, then the capitalist gospel collapses under its own dead weight.

What terrifies the establishment isn’t failure. It’s feasibility.

If it works in New York, there’s no reason it can’t work in Nebraska. If it works in Queens, it can work in Kansas City. And once proof exists, belief becomes irrelevant. The ship of democracy, fully refitted, will keep sailing — and no one can claim it isn’t American."

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, S01 E12: Light Hope (2018)

Bonus:

Anthony Head (1954-2026) as Rupert Giles

the past few days my mind has been consumed by an ongoing story about Bricks and Minifigs, a second hand LEGO store, stealing $200,000 worth of vintage Star Wars LEGO sets from an old man, and using several police departments to illegally obstruct any investigation into it. Police harassment escalated so badly Reckless Ben, the youtuber investigating, was jailed a few times and is now in Mexico. (wikipedia page if you don't want to watch a video)

this story has police corruption across states. healthcare costs. mormons. it feels like a modern day tintin adventure lampooning america. or an episode of south park

if you are making something featuring multiple flags and you put in the asexual flag, you better put in the aromantic flag.

if you put in the aroace flag, you better put in the aroallo flag.

^ the aromantic flag

^ the aroallo (aromantic allosexual) flag

& just btw, aromantic erasure is so bad that on pubmed, many of the very few studies that have looked into aspec people specifically, categorize us as a type of asexuality. from this study:

Our findings highlight that aromantic people wish for aromanticism not to be considered a part of asexuality—a practice that has dominated contemporary literature (Antonsen et al. 2020; Carvalho & Rodrigues, 2022; Clark & Zimmerman, 2022; Hall & Knox, 2022; Zheng & Su, 2018). Many participants clarified the distinction between their sexual identity and romantic identity and highlighted that though they may be connected for some, they should be considered independently as unique contributors to an individual’s identity and experience. This aligns with a previous aromantic community survey that showed 72% of the sample did not identify with asexual terminology (AUREA, 2021a). In combination with our findings, this suggests that a tendency to conflate and describe these identities as the same or linked may be to the disadvantage of a significant portion of the aromantic community.

this is why it is so important to include aromantic people as our own group and to specifically include non-asexual aromantics. i hope y'all can understand how frustrating it is to be erased through a group that is already erased.

asexual representation is sparse? all aromantic rep is asexual and most of the time people don't even bother to remember that "aromantic" is its own thing. i can't count how many times i've seen a character talk about not experiencing romantic attraction, only for people to go "wow asexual rep!" even though sexual attraction was never brought up.

asexual community & resources are sparse? when i try to look up groups for aromantics, i get resources on "ace & aro groups" that are literally all asexual-focused. at best asexual-focused with a mention of aromantic people. which isn't really helpful when you are aroallo and don't really want or need a group that is clearly meant for alloro asexuals and aroaces.

asexual history is sparse? i've literally never seen anything even trying to talk about aromantic history. the most impactful thing on aro history is that one tumblr post talking about a woman at a nursing home who heard the term and realized her best friend was likely aro. see above with the character situation as well.

my point here is not "aros have it worse than aces" because we are both aspec and both get fucked over by the same forces and in fact, a LOT of asexual aromantics are also very frustrated by aromantic erasure! i've even heard some people talk about not identifying as strongly as asexual, even though it fits them, because they feel their aro identity is more important to them but gets constantly erased by their asexuality.

my point is that it is so fucking disheartening to be aro even in queer spaces that are trying to be asexual-inclusive, even in supposedly aspec spaces, because it swiftly becomes apparent that people see your entire identity as just a footnote for asexuality. so many people never even realize they are aro because they aren't asexual and don't realize that you can be aro but not ace. i dealt with some really intense arophobia as a teen after realizing i was aro, feeling broken and alone. it hit much harder than any internalized homophobia or transphobia did for me at the time. i did not meet another person who identified as aromantic irl until this year. any resources and community that i had as a queer teen, as a trans teen, did not exist for me as an aro teen and does not exist for me as an aro adult, really.

and big problem is that, because people think of aromanticism as just a footnote of asexuality, they implicitly assume that more asexual rep, more asexual resources, more asexual visibility will automatically serve aromantics too. and when it doesn't work like that, aro people continue to suffer as a result.

happy pride month!! some aro ace Phantumps to celebrate!