#COMMON BONDS

[aroaessidhe]

Exciting news - Common Bonds is getting a sequel anthology! more aromantic & platonic stories!

The kickstarter will launch February 16 for #AroWeek. if you're interested in helping promote, sign up here!

kickstarter is live!

[layaart]

Here's the cover I designed/illustrated for Common Bonds 2! another anthology of aromantic/platonic stories!

kickstarter launches feb 16

[moviesludge]

Character discovers a displayed array of body parts:

BODY PARTS HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL MARS ATTACKS

[specialagentartemis]

Aro Week may be over, but Common Bonds 2 still has two weeks to meet its Kickstarter goal. An anthology of original aromantic sci-fi and fantasy - that is also open to submissions! So, if any writers of aro fiction have an idea they want to see published in an aro anthology, this is a great opportunity.

[askanaroace]

https://claudiearseneault.com/call-for-submissions-common-bonds-2/

The submission call for Common Bonds 2 has officially been announced!

This is copy'pasta'd directly from the above link:

Common Bonds returns for another anthology of aromantic science fiction and fantasy!

At the heart of this collection are the bonds that impact our lives from beginning to end: platonic relationships. Whether with family, mentors, friends, colleagues, or found family, these links pepper our lives and their importance is often overlooked. We seek to explore the powerful impact of these bonds on aromantic people through the lens of science-fiction and fantasy.

We dream of sisters on a roadtrip through space, of queerplatonic partners hunting dragons, of an alchemy teacher changing the course of their student’s life, of neighbours supporting each other through the apocalypse.

The heart of the anthology

Common Bonds 2 is open to short story and poetry submissions with these three elements at their core:

Belongs in the fantasy or science fiction genre Has a clear aromantic MC Centers a non-romantic relationship

We aim to build an anthology vibrant with marginalized voices, and authors from all underrepresented backgrounds and marginalized communities are encouraged to submit. We are especially interested in hearing from aromantic authors whose identity intersects with other marginalizations.

For Common Bonds 2, we are particularly interested in stories featuring these elements:

– Stories bold in their aromanticism and unafraid to explore its many facets – Horror with strong SFF elements/settings – Allosexual aromantic characters, and/or the exploration of platonic fuck buddies and other forms of non-romantic sexual partners – Worldbuilding that decentres romantic pairings as the highest form of attachment or a central structural unit of a society, especially inspired by authentic cultural and historical norms

Submission Details

We are seeking original submissions only; no reprints.

Word Count: Short stories of up to 7500 words; poems of up to 100 lines.

Rates: We will pay 0.08 USD/word or a flat $60 for poems.

Submission period: Submissions will be open until August 15th. We aim to respond in a timely manner but delays will depend on submission volume.

Format: Please submit your stories as a .doc or .docx file, and include your pen name, email, wordcount, and title at the start. We prefer a Modern Manuscript format but won’t hold you to it.

Simultaneous submissions: Yes, absolutely, but please withdraw immediately if your story is accepted elsewhere.

Multiple submissions: No. You may submit another story if your first is rejected before deadline. However, we make no guarantees about how quickly we’ll reply to submissions.

Previous contributors: Previous Common Bonds contributors are welcome to submit again.

How to submit

Please send all submissions to commonbondsantho@gmail.com with your email titled “[Submission] STORY TITLE” and your story attached. You do not need to include anything else in your cover letter, but we welcome a short bio.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Sepultura - Common Bonds

[anewgayeveryday]

Today's LGBT+ Character is;

Aja from Common Bonds; Moon Girls by Camilla Quinn-Bisexual Aromantic

Requested by Anon

Status: Alive

[wordwings]

New blog post with aro book recs and a reminder to check out the Kickstarter for Common Bonds 2!

[green-enby]

I know it's not the point of the post, but other than saying I feel this so bad, I actually have recommendations that are at least *close* to the kind of rep we're looking for here. And since it's Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, allow me to take this opportunity to share them:

Common Bonds - a speculative aromantic anthology

A collection of short fantasy-themed stories centered on aromantic characters and non-romantic bonds. The title mentions aromantic (although it's in the smaller subtitle so only a more meticulous parent would notice), and it is pretty obscure media, but I seriously suggest it if you're starving for good representation (it's not even expensive at all imo!). Most of the characters are aroace, but there's at least one aroallo, I haven't finished reading it so there might be more—

Hallo, Aro - Aro Worlds

Another collection of very short stories centered around aroallo characters. The other great thing about this one is that IT'S FREE. Also very niche, obviously.

Aro Worlds also has other collections like "When Quiver Meets Quill" (includes all types of aros including stories that don't mention sexual attraction at all, which I'd interpret as non-sam aro coded), "Bones of Green and Hearts of Gold" (same), "Spirits Most Singular" (non-partnering aros), and lots of other things, but I haven't read any of these ones. They're also all available to download for free, as they are collections of public works written by the community.

Koisenu Futari

A J-drama starring two aroace characters. From what I've seen it's decently popular! I've posted about it before and got more engagement than I'd expected. There also exists a subreddit for it, sooo.

Honourable mention: there's also some aroace rep in this other fantasy-themed collection called Being Ace, but it is obviously focused on aces first. It's a really good read so far, though.

I hope this encourages someone to pick up these pieces of media!

Happy Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week <2 [non-normative heart emoticon]

Any time someone asks “Hey, does anyone have any good aromantic representation that they can recommend?”, the responses are always like:

Alloromantic asexual character

Headcanon

Asexual character who doesn’t use the separate attraction model (because the writers didn’t do enough research to know what that is) but who is vaguely implied to not like romance

Character confirmed as aroace via twitter post

Headcanon

Side character in a heavily romance centric story

Headcanon

Aroace character who is actually pretty decent representation but who is also from some incredibly obscure webcomic or podcast or something, so you end up becoming incredibly fixated on a piece of media that no one will talk with you about :(

Character from a book written for teenagers (but which closeted teenagers can’t access without the risk of outing themselves to their parent(s)/guardian(s), because it’s very obvious from the cover and summary alone that it’s an LGBTQ+ book)

Headcanon

And of course, there’s never a single alloaro or non-SAM aro on the list.

[bluerosefox]

Prom Invite

Wanna know what would be funny.

DeadTired Prom story.

Like no really hear me out.

As a bet or a dare or just Danny deciding to shoot his shot, Danny asks Tim Drake-Wayne to Casper's High Senior Prom via social media. He honestly thinks it will NEVER happen because come on its the internet and stuff.

But what if, what if Tim whose had an argument with Bruce or something and wanting to have some normal fun again before he became CO-CEO of WE or Red Robin see's the @ Danny sent him and decides you know what.

WHY THE HECK NOT?!

Danny wasn't expecting the guy to show up on prom night to pick him.

[roomba-mangga]

Coming from someone whose expectations for fiction marketing itself based on representation may be unreasonably high and/or nitpicky, the Common Bonds anthology is very good so far actually, though I've only read the first two stories and some of Cinder.

(slight spoilers below)

The Aromatic Lovers: As the title implies, a cute romance between an alloro character and an aro character, set in a world where perfume scents are used to communicate facets of identity and gender. The alloro character is possibly agender and the story centers their POV, but their aro love interest isn't an archetype that would typically be written as aromantic, so that's a lovely surprise. (I expected POV character would be the aro one, given their awkwardness and how people react to them, but that wasn't the case).

Voices In The Air: Surprise Filipino fantasy, holy shit? An action-adventure piece featuring monsters of folklore and a tense relationship between two people grieving a lost loved one. I wasn't entirely sold on said relationship, however, because this story felt like a tiny snippet of a much larger and ultimately underdeveloped epic narrative. Still, I enjoyed it enough for the Filipino cultural elements included.

[bet-on-me-13]

Kitty was from Gotham.

So! Kitty was on her way to her old hometown to see what ever happened to her Dad.

See, she used to live in Gotham with her dad, mom nowhere to be seen of course, before running away to be with Johnny and subsequently dying.

She thought it would be better for her dad, not having another mouth to feed on a tight budget and not having to deal with their constant arguments every day. Looking back on it though, that might not have been the best idea. She hadn't even left a note, and for all they argued he did care about her enough that her disappearance would distress him.

But that was fine, she was going to check up on him right now!

He wasn't dead yet, she knew that much thanks to the Kid letting her access the Records of the Realms, but there was apparently some kind of Complications with his File which made it hard to pin down exactly how he was doing and where he was. So right now she was just wandering the streets of Gotham looking for him.

And guess what? No she still hadn't found him yet, he was suprisingly hard to track down. But she did find her apparent BROTHER!

Yeah, apparently sometime after she ran away, he had gotten himself another kid! He was too old to have been a bio kid so it was probably an adoption, but he definitely had a Connection to her Dad, the same kind that all parents and their kids have on their souls.

Well, if he adopted a kid that was fine by her, after all she always wanted a little brother (the Kid didn't count yet), but she kinda wished she had known before now!

She was gonna go introduce herself!

...

Tim was having a very weird day.

Well, it was a normal day for the most part. It became a weird one when a teenage girl walked up to him and introduced herself as his Sister, asking where their Dad was.

This wouldn't have been too distressing, Tim looked fairly average by the standards of Gotham and it would be easy to mistake him for another person with black hair and blue eyes.

The Distressing Part was that the girl in question had green hair, paper-white skin, and blood-red lipstick all covering a face he knew all too well. He saw it every time he had a nightmare about that night.

This Girl was the Joker's Daughter.

[artisimpossible]

It's $277 CAD now!! Please keep boosting!!! <3

Common Bonds 2 is $351 CAD away from funding! That is less than $250 USD! Please help us get there by spreading word of this aromantic anthology around. We've already covered $10,649 CAD but if we don't get that last $351, the entire project is canceled and we get nothing, so please, PLEASE boost!

[moviesludge]

Fern Violence

NEW NIGHTMARE

TILL DEATH DO WE SCARE

[batsandbirdbrains]

The one where the team realizes Batman is kinda emo

I just love the idea of season 1 yj robin being antsy an entire training session. He’s fidgety and keeps looking at the time and watching the door. It was weird, and none of them could figure out what the problem was.

Until Batman came in, and Robin darted at him.

“Are we going are we going are we going?”

Robin becomes an impatient toddler, bouncing in front of Batman and hanging off his cape. Batman just has his arms crossed over his chest, a tiny smirk pulling at his lips.

“Tickets secured.”

“YES! Yes yes yes yes yes!” Robin throws his hands up in the air and then does a victory lap around Batman before jumping up and hanging off Batman’s shoulders, shoving his face over Batman’s left shoulder to stare at him. “Which day?”

“Both.”

“HA!”

Robin throws his head back, and the team can’t figure out how Batman never seems to even stumble when Robin pulls him all sorts of directions with his antics.

But also they’re so confused about what their conversation is about. It’s not making any sense at all.

Until three months later, when Robin tells them he and Batman won’t be available the next Friday or Saturday.

“Can’t tell you why, it’s classified,” Robin says, a dumb grin on his face. “Has zero to do with a big concert in Gotham this weekend. Nothing to do with that at all.”

And suddenly their weird interaction from a few months ago pops into everyone’s heads, and the team huddles around Artemis after Robin leaves, her thumbs moving at lightning speed across her phone to try and figure out what concert they could be going to. This is the most personal information they’ve ever heard about Batman, they’re so curious. What kind of music could Batman even be into? They didn’t realize he had a personality.

And they find out it there’s a band in Gotham for two nights that weekend before they move onto the next tour stop in Metropolis. And Artemis even surprises herself with the way she laughs so hard.

Because it’s a totally emo/goth kinda band. Black face paint and everything. Dramatic music videos. A whole schtick. Their fans dress up in similar face paint and over the top costumes and get into heated debates about band lore on Twitter.

And Batman is going to their concert. Both nights.

“Well the guy does dress up like a giant bat,” Wally says, his voice faraway as he imagines what Batman and Robin might be wearing to this concert.

“Robin once said they both wear a black face paint kinda thing under their masks in case anything rips or something,” Conner mentions. “So I can see it.”

On Saturday morning, they’re all lounging around before training, and M’gann is the one who sees pictures online of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson at the same concert from the night before.

They’ve both got skull face paint on (not the whole face, just enough for the general vibe) and Bruce even has little fangs drawn on. They’re both wearing all black, with studded belts and VIP wristbands. And there’s older pictures of them seeing the same band years ago, with a tiny Dick Grayson sitting on Bruce Wayne’s shoulders.

“Oh my gosh,” M’gann gasps. “Do you think Robin met Bruce Wayne?”

[artisimpossible]

Thank you for the spotlight!!!

Something I want to emphasize is that we put this anthology together because we wanted to spotlight *aromantic* people, not "aroace". Being ace is great, but it's not interchangeable with being aro. Being aro is very much its own thing, and many people are aro but not ace, yet most groups and anthologies that seek to highlight "aro and ace" stories primarily focus on the asexual element, sometimes even mis-defining "aromantic" in offensive ways or including lineups in which not a single aro story is present. This anthology is about showcasing the way *aro* people explore platonic relationships, whether those people be asexual or allosexual. We just want a space where aromantic people are allowed to be the star of their own show instead of being erased entirely or only acknowledged as a subset of asexuality, an identity they may very well not even identify with.

We're about 60% funded in just under 72 hours of launching, and it's been amazing seeing how excited people are for this project! Please help us spread the word by reblogging this post or sending it to your aro friends. And if you feel passionate about sharing more aro stories and paying aro authors to write them, please consider checking out our kickstarter and/or backing it! We appreciate any and all support y'all can provide <3

Aro Week Spotlight: Common Bonds 2, ed. by Claudie Arseneault, Emery Lee, and RoAnna Sylver

Happy Aro Week! In celebration, we’re highlighting the followup to a popular aromantic anthology (whose cover reveal we happen to have done here)—yes, Common Bonds returns for another anthology! Five years ago, Claudie Arseneault, Emery Lee, and RoAnna Sylver put together a collection of nineteen speculative short stories and poems featuring aromantic characters about platonic relationships. The…