#not only am i aro but romantic relationships? not for me

[altschmerzes]

out there doing the lord’s work (headcanoning characters as aromantic and Not interested in romantic relationships at all actually, alienating one fandom at a time but having a fantastic blast with it all the while, which is really all that matters)

[gay-otlc]

Shoutout to aros who are repulsed by romance when it applies to them, and extra shoutout to aros who are repulsed by romance in fiction, and extra extra shoutout to aros who are repulsed by real romance that is separate from them

[stardial]

You're super cool and if they don't have a crush on you that's their loss. You deserve someone who is endlessly grateful to spend time with you. Someone who's desperate to be with you. Accepting anything less than that is beneath you

WELL. idk i’m actually fine w most ppl not crushing on me? i can get all these things out of a rly nice friendship too <3 i’m specifically hoping this One person is crushing on me because they’re incredibly fun to flirt with

[nightfallsystem]

I KEEP FORGETTING MY QUEER IDENTITIES HELP

[spocks-kaathyra]

"ur repressed" okay well have u even considered that emotions r purposeless and only serve to cause harm to those around u and I have achieved a unique transcendent state beyond them. have u considered that

[knifearo]

bro amatonormativity and relationship anarchy needs to be like common knowledge for shippers because I literally got like drawn and quartered for critiquing people for shipping a certain ship romantically when it was closer to a qpr. lemme tell u. i awoke some DEMONS. and the responses I got were allos but also OTHER aromantic/aroace people telling me I was 1: making a qpr romance-lite. or. 2: them just saying "oh but.. they had a kid! they said I love you." like HUH

MAN. fandom culture is kind of uniquely intolerable for all the focus on shipping and for all the ways that people invent to get people together they never seem to get around to anything aspec... genuinely you cannot win. if you're romance-repulsed you're inundated with it and if you're romance-favorable you get erased and if you're just trying to aro-fy it you get yelled at by everyone... i stand with you i hear your struggle 🫡

that's so wild though. i will personally say that i have not particularly liked the way that qprs have been framed/discussed in the popular conversations around relationships because of the way that it's usually presented as "you can have a romantic relationship OR a qpr!" which is what i think is people presenting them as romance-lite (the aspec alternative to a romantic relationship rather than something entirely different that exists outside of those frameworks). saying that a romantic relationship should be/is a qpr is. not that. i feel like a lot of this results from the fact that other people's understanding of our community's terms is so limited, so every conversation we have for allo benefit is baby's first relationship anarchy, and then well-meaning aro people jump into conversations with an understanding that's borne from a very basic set of concepts and definitions that isn't equipped to engage with more complex conversations. which isn't their fault really but. imagine a beautiful world where we all actually knew what a qpr was...

anyway i think we have to start eating people. and then we can have the real actual cool conversations about relationships and the different ways in which they appear without people popping up to add unhelpful and uninformed comments </3

[jorvikzelda]

today i had this Vivid memory flash through my mind of kissing my ex boyfriend (this was like 2018) and i felt so viscerally fucking revolted and I gotta say. it is truly impressive that I didn’t realise I’m a lesbian sooner than fucking half a year ago

[hero-dualies-pog]

i think i finally get all those “maybe we could do with a little less shipping in fandom. this is not a complaint but a cry for help” aromantic posts

[luvsavos]

random vent(?) in the tags, feel free to ignore i just have a lot of pent up emotions to get out today apparently

[callixton]

genuinely what happened to make me so romance repulsed. i was not always like this

[ilovedthestars]

thoughts on "Significant Other" and ambiguous relationships in fiction (they're great)

Some thoughts I was having in the tags on that elphaba post that got a little too long for tags, and then accidentally turned into basically a whole essay. Oops. Don't let the length fool you into thinking this won't be mostly a stream of consciousness ramble of my feelings.

One of my favorite types of relationship in media is two characters that love each other, and are clearly incredibly significant in each others' lives, but the type of love or relationship they're in is never specified. I feel like this about a lot of non-canon queer ships, actually, and there are times when I personally am very happy with those relationships remaining in the nebulous realm of non-canon, because becoming "canon" means becoming romantic. And one of the things that I've started to notice as I question more and more whether I might be somewhere on the aro (and/or ace) spectrum is that I vibe with this sort of undefined relationship a lot more than I vibe with a lot of fictional depictions of romance--and when I vibe with romance, it's because the romance also includes this feeling of significance, like the characters are actually deeply important to each others' lives.

Which brings me around to the other thought I had, because it occurred to me that using "significant other" as a term for "romantic partner" is...honestly very limited, and kind of makes me sad. Here's this phrase that could mean "person who is really important in my life," no matter what that relationship looks like. But it's become pretty much synonymous with romance. Absolutely no shade to anyone who uses it for their partner--it's sweet, and gender neutral, and it has a nice ambiguity about how serious or official the relationship is. But I think there could be even more room for ambiguity about what kind of relationship it refers to, including relationships that wouldn't necessarily be defined as "romantic" by the people involved. I'm not saying we should, or could, change the way we use it, but I just had a moment when I looked at the phrase "significant other" and thought "why do those words have to mean 'romantic partner'?" and the answer is, of course, amatonormativity. Sigh.

Anyway, to go back to relationships in media, I've noticed this pattern in stories that I identify with (although that might be too strong a word, but stories that I enjoy and have feelings about). I love the ambiguity of a "significant other" relationship in a less traditional sense of the phrase, especially as I'm still questioning where my own feelings and attractions fall. There's room for the relationship to be interpreted as romantic, but there's also room for platonic, or queerplatonic, or found family interpretations of those relationships, and there's also space for using none of those labels and simply letting it be love, without any extra boxes.

However, I've also noticed that often a lot of fans insist these kinds of relationships are romantic in a way that doesn't leave room for other interpretations. And at least in the online spaces I frequent, I see this especially with same-gender or otherwise not-straight-if-it-was-romantic pairings. And it makes me very sad, and often frustrated, when I see that ambiguity glossed over with the idea that significance must equal romance.

Look, there is no easy answer here. There is not enough explicit representation of queer relationships in media. There's also basically no explicit aro and/or ace representation in media, at least in mainstream media. So sometimes all we have are those characters who could be either, or both, or neither. And of course the people who are starving for representation of gay people in love want to claim those characters as their own. And of course the people who are starving for a-spec representation want to claim those characters as their own. And the former have louder voices, most of the time. And sometimes if you're starving for stories like yours, then it feels like other interpretations are trying to take that away.

I get it. I really get it. But also, this isn't a zero-sum game. There doesn't have to be a right answer. I think there's something really special about ambiguity, because it means that everyone can take what they want from it. People who want to see queer love, people who want to see intimate close friendship, people who want to see aros in a QPR, and people like me who are most comfortable outside of all the boxes can all see themselves reflected. And we absolutely need more representation of all kinds of relationships, so that people who want to see them explicitly spelled out on-screen or on-page don't have to make do with hints and possibilities. I want that to happen, and I think it's getting better, and will continue to. In the meantime, though, I wish there was less fighting over the scraps. "They're important to each other" can mean so many different things, and all of them can be true at once.

[the-yearning-astronaut]

Oh hello 3am existential crisis. Haven't seen you around in a while...can't say I missed you.

[kethabali]

i dont really feel romance but i like the process of a relationship its nice to be cared for and uplifted on a daily basis.. i guess i just want people that love me and are verbal about it and are physically affectionate

[raethethey]

i feel like my friends are ghosting me..

[sammydem0n64]

Tbh fellas my identity has reached a point of true “idgaf” (it has been like this for months actually. Lolz.) Thinking abt it gives me brainrot. Pronouns? Idc call me whatever. Gender? I am not a man that’s all I got. Sexuality? Idk. I don’t wanna date people tho!!!!!!!!! I don’t wanna find myself!!!!!!!!!!!! I am Aaliyah sammydem0n64 and I am autistic and that’s it‼️‼️‼️‼️

[chisatowo]

I love making aro characters as an aro person cause it's just self inflicted relief after spending so much time seeing the weak alloro aro hcs as the "nothing" option for a characters romantic orientation to just remember that aro characters can in fact be written to be complex and interesting characters and their aromanticism can be incredibly meaningful to their character and story even if it's not a point of conflict