kieflo

[kieflo]

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[kieflo]

showing up to work at costco wearing a t shirt that says KILL THE ENEMY and stone faced telling the manager that if our foes try anything tonight I will break them

[kieflo]

subway master hilda :]]

[kieflo]

it’s been over a decade since oras so here’s an aged up wally!

[kieflo]

the worst part of being a non-american on the internet is statistically you're probably going to make a lot of friends who ARE american and then you start getting crazy thoughts like "i should take a vacation to buttfuck tennessee" or "i wish i could immigrate to new jersey"

[kieflo]

last year of artfight pissed me off

[kieflo]

what is it with tiktok tradwives and the worst cooking known to mankind? like where in the bible does it say that it's a cardinal sin to season your food?

[kieflo]

my mans running animation only got two frames

[kieflo]

for rqs can we get some more peonia.. maybe eating her fav food or binge watching a show.

i think it'd be fun to see her and bede have awkward cousin moments too lol.

i'm super bad at giving chars fav foods or shows so you get peonia n her tyrantrum being silly

[kieflo]

Go my scarab

[kieflo]

jakey wrapped you wished jakey

died 20434 times exploded 534 times got run over 5422 times

[kieflo]

im gonna kill myself [remembers that suicide jokes make people uncomfortable] uhh [in valley girl voice] im like soooo totally gonna blow my brains out... [waiting for polite laughter that never comes] sorry [remembering that i apologise too much and i need to work on that] No im not

[kieflo]

[said with increasing amount of distress] i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this i got this

[kieflo]

ITS HER! THE ONE AND ONLY SUSIE! ITS HER! This took a while... but i think she looks pretty neat!

[kieflo]

my roommate got amongus ejected from a polycule a few years back and shes always told the story as "i started argung with one girlfriend so she manipulated my other girlfriend to turn against me." and while i dont know how true to life that version of events is i do greatly enjoy imagining the polycule equivilent of the kings evil advisor whispering in their ear grima wormtongue style. its got a flair to it.

[kieflo]

you may notice i use the phrase "my beloved" frequently. this is because i am in love with the world and everything in it. hope this clears things up <3

[kieflo]

There’s nothing wrong with experiencing aromanticism as a total lack of romantic attraction. That’s a natural, common experience among aros. But… I don’t think aromanticism should necessarily be defined that way. Attraction may be clear and easy to define and categorize for some people, but it’s important to understand: for most people, it’s a mess. Feelings are subjective, people experience them differently, people describe them differently. Romantic attraction is one of the feelings that’s particularly hard to define, and romance itself is a sort of peculiar cultural artifact that lacks a standard definition and alienates a lot more people than only those who cannot feel romantic love.

Some people are aromantic because they don’t want intimate relationships, irrespective of attraction. Some people are aromantic because they do want intimacy, but find themselves alienated and harmed by the structures built up around romance and love and cannot make themselves love “correctly” without suffering. Some people are aromantic because they experience romantic attraction rarely or don’t care to act on that attraction.

Amatonormativity hurts a LOT of people. Not all of those people have to identify as aro, but if someone feels drawn to that label because of how society’s expectations around love have hurt them, that’s good! Even if they experience romantic attraction in some way or amount, they belong in the aro community, because they recognize the same things that hurt us are also hurting them. They deserve support from people who understand what they’re going through and the aromantic community deserves to be known and to grow.

There’s a little voice in the back of my head every time I think about this that goes “but what if expanding the definition of aromantic makes it easier for people with bad intentions, like trolls, to pretend to be aro and gain access to our safe spaces only to hurt us or undermine everything we’ve worked for? What if we broaden the definition too much and the aromantic label ceases to be meaningful?” First of all, restricting the definition is not going to deter anyone acting in bad faith. That line of thinking is a slippery slope towards gatekeeping and exclusionary rhetoric. People who want to hurt us are already going to hurt us on purpose, and excluding people who need our support only does the trolls’ work for them. Secondly, there are ways to change a definition to be more inclusive without erasing the essence of a community. Just as what it means to be transgender is less “identifies strongly, solely, and stereotypically with a different binary gender than the one assigned at birth” and more “internal sense of self does not completely match gender assigned at birth,” what it means to be aro is more along the lines of “personal relationship to intimacy is noticeably different than what society seems to expect” than “never experiences this particular type of attraction.” Especially when what counts as romantic attraction, love, and expression can all vary wildly from person to person, even among those who never questioned their orientation, and even among those who examined themselves and decided they’re alloromantic and know what romance means to them.

To be clear, I’m not saying that aromanticism currently IS defined as a total lack of romantic attraction. From what I can recall, it’s defined more as a total or partial lack of romantic attraction, which I still don’t think is inclusive enough. Sometimes it’s not about attraction! Sometimes it’s about how the accepted framework for understanding intimacy and human connection simply doesn’t apply to you in a meaningful way. Whatever that means for you, if you feel aromantic about it, you have a place in the aromantic community.

I get that it’s hard to come up with a succinct definition that’s accessible to the general public without first explaining a bunch of niche terms, but I still think we should at least be thinking about it and talking about it. More importantly though, we should be listening to the people in the gray areas and letting them participate and giving them support and learning from them, not talking over them or excluding them or assuming they are privileged in ways they aren’t. There will always be competing access needs in communities that aim to be as inclusive as possible, but excluding vulnerable people who want to be there isn’t the answer to that problem.