#anti romance

[shadycomputerpolice]

If you are straight, how do you cope with a desire for relationships?

My seperatist beliefs aside, the idea that humans will all find romantic love as long as we are open to it is delusional fairytale thinking. Even if all men and all women were good people, time, location, language, physical attraction and compatibility would still be barriers to finding love.

Think about it, the number of people we meet physically and virtually is limited

Of those people we meet, how many of them will we have meaningful interactions with?

Of those we have meaningful interactions with, how many will we like?

Of those we like, how many will like us back?

Of those that like us back, how many will we love?

Of those we love, how many will love us back?

Of those that love us, how many of them are we compatible with enough to develop a relationship with?

The above scenario would still apply in the heterosexual utopia that reformist hope to achieve.

Now in our current reality, we know most men are trash: if they are not rapist, porn watching scum, they make excuses for their rapist, porn watching scum brethen. As a heterosexual woman with basic self respect that people call "high standards", the number of potentially romantic partners is very low already, then add the natural elimination that happens even in the ideal situation then do the calculation.

As a straight seperatist, I "deal" with my desire for love and companionship by simply understanding that humans cannot control whether they find love. Before I accepted that men are a global menace and men are trash not just the ones I had the misfortune of interacting with, I had accepted that finding true love is about luck, pure dumb luck. The only thing you can do is to be a good person, live your life and have a robust social life to meet people who might like and hopefully they like you back and you both are compatible enough to form a loving relationship.

Romance should not be a life goal for anybody because you have no control over your ability to find love.

Listen as adults, we all need to understand and accept, there is a price to pay for the life we want. Living a life of freedom and self respect has a cost and living a life with "romance" has a cost. Whatever decision you make, you have to be willing to pay the price.

[lapinlunaire-games]

Announcing the Anti-Romance Jam, an exploration of all the messy spaces and sensations that exist against and around romance! From May 14 - July 14, 2023, submissions will be open for creations centered on anti-romance: what it is, what it does to us, and how we do things to it.

For the purposes of this jam, we invite you to think of anti-romance as a spectrum and a series of questions:

Is anti-romance the opposite of romance, its absence, or something else entirely? Are these things mutually exclusive?

Can anti-romance coexist with romance? Must it? How?

If music be the food of love, what feeds (or devours) anti-love?

Who does anti-romance look like?

Is anti-romance a resistance, subversion, or reclamation? 

How does it do what it does?

What's 🎶 love 🎶 got to do — got to do with it?

Sign up on itch.io | Discord | Full list of rules under the cut; feel free to reach out with any questions!

The Anti-Romance Jam welcomes:

Solo- and team-created submissions

 All kinds of games, art, and other media are encouraged 

Including but not limited to: interactive & kinetic/dynamic fiction or poetry; visual novels; TTRPGs; academic essays; zines; scripts; fiction; visual art; etc.

NSFW content with appropriate content warnings included

Previously published work

Revisiting an old flame is encouraged, so long as there is something new (edits, expansions, etc.) involved

The Anti-Romance Jam DOES NOT welcome:

Spam entries - all submissions must be related to anti-romance in some way

Hateful content

The jam will open for submissions at midnight on 14 May 2023 and will close on 14 July 2023 (CST; please check above for your local timezone).

[boushrahydr123]

A poem from my unreleased chapbook

[mojinchiimanga]

[theprofessionalpromptmaker]

Person A: How do you even enjoy dating sims? You hate all humans and romantic love! Person B: Well, first I decide which of the love interests pisses me off the most, then I find out which love interests hate the same one I do, and then I date all the ones who hate the one I hate. Person C: Is mutual hatred the closest you’ll ever get to the human emotion called ‘love’? Person B: Mutual hatred is love. Why are you acting like those are two separate emotions?

[sudamaniparva]

i love how it's clearly white people, specifically white women who write about arranged marriages turning into romantic love.

idiots, romantic love is the waste product of an arranged marriage.

[rejected-man]

Love is Transactional

When I am at my worst, I am alone.

When I am poor, I am despised.

When I am sick, I am disgusting.

This is your love, and I will reciprocate.

Till impending death, we unite.

Our old age creeps upon us.

Our retirement plan; our children.

We are vile, psychopathic, and selfish...

Then, in death, we forever part.

Hate, suffering, jealousy, and despair...

It's all we know now...

Clearly, hell is on our horizon.

[violetlunette]

Self-indulgent rant; I hate it when romance gets in the way of a great story! >:x

I have read several isekai / time travel stories where the focus at first is on families reconnecting, getting revenge, or having a perfect sismance (the female version of the bromance), and then the writers feel the need to cram in a love interest and suddenly the story shifts over to focus on the romance. Come on! Just because the protagonist is a girl doesn’t mean there automatically has to be a romance. Seriously, Horror movies are the only genre where the female lead doesn’t have a love interest fifty percent of the time. Outside of that, the only leads from good movies with female leads that don’t have a romance are the Magical Nannies Nanny McPhee and Mary Poppins. Look, I don’t hate romance, I really don’t. I squeed and awed during the Disney movies and such. However, those movies managed to incorporate their romances naturally. More importantly, they didn’t put the rest of the story on hold or interfere with the plot, or the other relationships being set up. It’s just so—ugh! Romance is nice, but not every story needs it. You focus on a revenge plot, the family re-connection, or a sismance, and the story can still be just as entertaining. Any, that's the end of my ramble. Thank you for tuning in, sorry that it’s just a rant-dump.

[rockinginneverland]

See it’s the fact that more and more lately I’ve been angrier and angrier at the idea of romantic love or romantic relationships and I find myself frustrated not being able to understand this obsession with it or just sometimes the idea of romance grossed me out, there are many types of love but this society os obsessed with romantic love though they just like calling it love thought love is a vast term. When I was younger, must have been middle school maybe, I used to write letters for my friends and I would write quotes about how much they meant to me and how important they were but I guess somewhere along the way I stopped because I soon realized that people looked down on me for it because in their eyes I must have been in love with whomever I was giving letters to and they were scandalized by the prospect of a girl loving another girl romantically, though even if they was the case which it wasn’t but even if that was the case why would that have been wrong? I never looked at someone romantically and I part of me always knew I must be asexual and later on aromantic even if at the time I didn’t have a name for it. So I guess I grew up not knowing how to show people outside of my family members affection because I was afraid it would be mistaken for romantic love, my kindness for flirting, my attention for interest in perusing someone romantically, I also want to add that I didn’t know then that I was autistic. So you see there’s always been this confusion in me on how to show love, show affection, angry at the pity stares people use to give me cause I’ve never had a boyfriend and years where going by and I was still single, of being asked when was I going to have a boyfriend and later on when was I getting married or if I wanted to. I remember one time my brother asked me if I was asexual and I remember saying that I wasn’t because I wanted a boyfriend which is bullshit because you can be asexual and have a boyfriend, not feeling romantic attraction towards someone is being aromantic, which like I mentioned I discovered I was too farther down the line. I felt alienated because I was never looking to date someone or had an interest in it but all around me that’s what people where doing but I will say I was longing from companionship though I guess people would automatically take that as romantic though is not, though I guess society has made that the default.

I hate saying that I’m aromantic asexual not because I’m ashamed of it but because I hate people’s reaction towards it, as if it’s heartbreaking to realize I don’t feel sexual nor romantic attraction towards people as if I’m broken for not feeling it as if I will never be complete because of it… as of how can’t I not want a boyfriend… how am I supposed to get married if I don’t go out there and meet people… why is it not cool, bet… why it always pity on people’s eyes or not believing me when I say I don’t feel sexual or romantic attraction… as if is not confusing enough for myself as it is to have to describe what it means to not feel something that you’ve never had in the first place, how do you explain the lack of something? I’ve always felt lonely really and now the more I realize how to me friendships have always had much more weight than romantic relationships because I’ve never cared for them, or how even sometimes I find myself questioning my feelings because of how ingrained this idea of romantic love is in society and then being angry with myself for invalidating my own feelings when I know them to be true. They say the first thought you have when it comes to something is what you’ve been taught you believe and the second is your reaction to what you believe to that subject of matter and now I understand why there is a war sometimes in my mind because society has taught me and made me believe that a woman and a man cannot be friends so I when I’m reading a book and I love these 2 people and the relationship they have, always friendships, my brain always has to throw this thought at me… oh so you ship them? As in romantically?… it angers me because that’s society speaking not me so I need to reiterate how there nothing more than friends even though I shouldn’t because why is it romantic love the default? And why is it that is only valid for these 2 people to be friends, man and woman, if they each have partners? Because otherwise they would fall in love with each other… BULLSHIT… it’s almost 6am and here I am rambling about romantic love and being aroace and how hard it is to let go of believes that have been engrained in our minds and how frustrating it is for me now that I finally found what I truly believe in and my true feeling on the matter, how I love friendships more than anything and how when reading books those are the ones that stick the most specially those that are so deep and beautiful and raw that people have the need to ask if they are romantic even though friendships can be just as strong and beautiful and raw as romantic relationships, how they can just be friendships and be all that… because those are the types of relationships I want… the ones that are everything but don’t have an ounce of romance in them, the ones that people want to romance code because that can’t just be friendships… I like those friendships because they defy societies views and expectations when it comes to relationships and what is deem romantic… see I’m petty sometimes. See in books relationships like this would be Fenrys and Aelin for example. Just friendship and the bond they have is just as strong and beautiful and raw and deep as the romantic one Aelin has with Rowan. A beautiful friendship nothing more, nothing less. I fuck with those relationships, the one line Aelin and Fenrys but then again some people reaction towards it turn me petty and make me angry to see how you only believe is posible because one of them already found a romantic partner, their romantic soulmate forever because other wise you would be the first to ship it and ask if the single one has feelings for the other instead of just understanding that the relationship between these 2 people can be just a FRIENDSHIP…

So I’m here at 6am being angry and frustrated with romantic love and wanting to throw hands because of how suffocated it makes me more and more each time… see some days I can picture it in theory but never in practice… I’m just tired of romantic love being the center of attention when it is not the only type of love there is… I want to write letters to people and have it just be affection not romantic just my way of showing I care, my way of showing I appreciate you… like k appreciate the moon and the stars and the clouds and how I love the owls and the foxes and the cats, how I’m in love with all that but never romantically… why would that be the default?

So here I am not knowing how to show love or affection feeling angry at romantic love and feeling lonely and tired and wanting companionship and deep friendships and how even though I’m disgusted sometimes with romantic love I’m not with love because there are many times of love… so I guess I will fall in love with myself and with museums and the world and nature and letters and writing and people but never romantically, no never romantically…

[grainjew]

You stand at the shore. The wind blows in your hair, whipping it backwards, stiffening it with seaspray. Beside you, your best friend holds your hand, watching with you. Over the horizon, your lover knots ropes on a ship, a page in your handwriting protected in a shirt pocket, over the heart. Who do you love the more? Flip a coin. Don’t look at the result: it fell into the sea.

a very personal piece written for the anti-romance jam on itch! thank u to the organizers for making me speedrun my aro character arc so i could be in the right place to submit to it haha

[asixnfr0g]

Marrying you

Would mean

Being trapped in a kingdom

Where even the queen is enslaved,

And you're the master.

You'd take the lead

Of the empire against me

Because of your alliance

With my renegade.

Bonded in chains,

I would be dragged by your reign.

I'd go neither seen nor heard,

Since the populace agrees

I am difficult on the eyes,

And hard on the tongue.

I'd be taken into your arms

As a liability; not an asset.

Your wife: a title I don't claim.

Dethrone your queen,

For it is not me.

~ asixnfr0g

[spirit-of-anime]

Anti Romance - by Hidaka Shoko

[lapinlunaire-games]

Play now!

From the Desk of Professor J. Chernilskaya

Dear RUSS/ENGL 3150 students, The documents for your final exam have been sent to your university email addresses. If you have not received the original text and three glosses, contact me and Professor Vie as soon as possible. Instructions for your final submissions through Chalkboard are included in the assignment file. It has been a pleasure to share this semester of embodied translation with you. Professor Vie and myself hope it will serve you well in your journeys forward. All best, J.

An exercise in translation, memory, and (anti)mimesis. There have always been stories and there has always been art. There always will be. There is only one question: how does it end?

(Sometimes leaving something unsaid means it'll tell you its own name in your tongue.)

Created for the 2023 Anti-Romance Jam​.

[frans-murphy]

I was taken advantage of

One night it went farther than before

It just so happens to have happened on a day

that everyone knows as valentines day

and every year

I go into a spiral around that day

my contempt for romance

my discomfort

my anger

my distrust

my (self)abandonment

(If you hold hands in front of me i will gag)

[mojinchiimanga]

[theprofessionalpromptmaker]

Person A: My friends introduce me to their worst exes with the explanation of ‘you’re both terrible people, you should date’. And so far I’ve won every one of those relationships. Person B: I’m scared to ask what you consider winning the relationship. Person A: Them leaving the relationship with more trauma than they started with and me being perfectly unaffected. We were introduced as both terrible, but in the end, I triumph, for I am the worse person. I deserve a medal.