But don't forget who you really are. And I'm not talking about your so-called real name. All names are made up by someone else, even the one your parents gave you. You know who you really are. When you're alone at night, looking up at the stars, or maybe lying in your bed in total darkness, you know that nameless person inside you.
― Louis Sachar, Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake
Honestly I'm glad that the aro community is moving from "we still love our friends and family we're not heartless!" to "we don't need to make up for our lack of romantic attraction with other forms of love" because yeah, our platonic and/or familial relationships are not romance-lite or a substitute for romantic love and a lot of aros reject the idea of love altogether. So yeah fuck trying to appeal to alloromantic people with the whole "we swear we're normal" thing. I don't need to make sense to anyone
Either you accept me as I am whether you understand me or not or you leave me the fuck alone
All sympathy for Palamedes tho bc having met Dulcie, a hunky mysterious death cultist swooping in to catch her like a romance novel protagonist is exactly the sort of excitement that would have distracted her for weeks. The thing with Gideon wasn't all that out of character if you couldn't hear their conversations