roboticanary

Hi, welcome

fair enough for going with aroflux, hope having a look on here will help you find out about yourself.

Wow I love my rpg group, I've heard a fair few stories here and on another thread of these games having romance forced into the story.

just a couple of days ago we were running through a story of politics in whatever generic fantasy kingdom we inhabit and were faced with a problem of getting our party in with the ruling faction, we needed help to defeat a necromancer nearby.

The story seemed to be set up with romance as a possibility, some characters we could seduce.

instead we went completely away from what our GM had in mind and started a revolution, he just rolled with it. I suspect this was meant to be a minor sidenote to the story but instead of a dull romance we have revolution and a good chance of dying before we even start what we were supposed to. I feel so lucky I am with a group of people who, although they are alloromantic, don't really want to go down the romantic route if there are other options around.

cool, hope you get enough responses

I cannot give much advice unfortunately, however what I will say is this. That behaviour is abusive. Plenty of abusers will act nice sometimes or put up a front to make you doubt yourself.there is no doubt that what you have described is abuse, there is no defense of 'but it rarely happens', abuse is abuse.

I do not know why this is the only site you have access to now but when you can, if you feel safe to do so,  make a point to find out for where you are what forms of child protection are available and how to contact them, also what organisations are around that offer advice and support. I have no idea what these would be as I do not know where you are but if you are safe to do so, find this out and at least then  you will know what your main options are. I cannot know your situation well enough to tell you what to do, however understanding what you can do should be useful.

I'm  around manchester at the moment, so not that far away. This sounds like a really cool idea.

Hi

can I just ask, is this survey for anything, say a piece of research or a school/uni project. It would be interesting to know what will happen to the results.

sure. I don't know if there is a better term for the sort of relationship you have, but it is a valid relationship so why not take the term. Maybe you will find a word that fits better in the future, if so great. If not, no worries.

To be honest it is not that I fear dying alone in itself but that I fear if my death is painful then dying alone will make it worse. If I were with someone they might call an ambulance, I have a chance of getting some drugs to numb the worst of the pain. Even if not I could at least die with a comforting voice and someone trying to make my last moments less unpleasant.

If I die alone then my big fear is that it will be a long, painful experience as there is no-one to help ease that. I could be collapsed on the floor for hours, maybe over a day slowly dying. no numbing the pain, no comfort. Hopefully if I do live alone I notice something is wrong and call an ambulance before but I fear I won't.

well done, it isn't easy to do that so good on you for getting the courage.

Hi,

Sounds like a good life, psychopathology does still sound fascinating, and probably less dangerous than trying to study psychopaths.

also awesome you have got into D&D, creative roleplay is a really interesting way to explore your identity (and just good fun)

wow, thank you everyone. I have plenty to listen to now. You people are awesome.

Also really cool that I am being reminded of musicians that I really should listen too more, it's been a while since I listened to Linkin Park and absolutely ages since I last heard any Dick Gaughan.

Hi

Oh god that tradition. thankfully my parents have pretty much given up asking about that sort of thing with me but I remember that sort of thing being really frustrating.

anyhow, welcome. let your hair down as much as you are comfortable with, we don't bite here.

1. as already said, you are not too young.

2. romantic attraction is not wanting to spend time with someone. I want to spend time with my dad.

Its fine that you want to spend time with her and not be romantically attracted.

It might be worth loooking deeper into types of attraction, for example seeing if how you feel is a better fit with how people describe aesthetic attraction or alterous attraction. If you can find a term that better decribes how you feel than romantic attraction that might help.

two cats, one amusingly lazy and one full of mischief, mainly he would open doors by jumping on them, I still remember seeing him hanging forlornly from the handle of a locked window and slowly falling off. Lazy cat once tried to convince me he had caught a sparrowhawk which had clearly just crashed into a house. I went outside and he was sitting there all proud like 'look human, behold my amazing hunting skills'

I also had one rabbit who was so calm back when i was a crazy toddler, and my little brother had a pet hamster who managed to escape into the cavity walls of the house for about a week, we had to catch him when he snuck out to nab some chocolate from the kitchen.

As for plants, my nan was a keen gardener and I have a few plants around that she gave me over the years. I keep a money plant on my desk which she gave me when I started uni. Lots of food plants as well. when i was very young my grandad put two small planters in his garden and set them as mine and my brothers, every time we went round we would check on the plants, water them and take care of them. we would grow some strawberries and a few vegetables, usually carrots and beetroot.

Welcome

sounds like arocalypse should be a good place to look at that confusion. hope you find what you are looking for.

Hi, welcome.

with all those things it sounds like you are keeping yourself busy.

also, stressful but interesting, honestly that's a great description.

One thing I quite like now and then is sad music, music with more downbeat themes. However at the moment what keeps happening is I look for a list, or pull up a playlist and it is just all romantic. all heartbreak. These songs just dont do anything for me, and i suspect they never will. I have really got into listening to folk songs about war, e.g. green fields of france, that sort of thing, because I struggle to find anything to grab that urge for sad music. But I would like to know songs from a wider range of genres that allow me to scratch that itch.

So does anyone have any recommendations for downbeat music about subjects like close friends or family.

in fiction: 

Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett (honestly if i was honest i would just list every Pratchett book and let this comment stretch for miles)

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (nother good one for humour, and I am a sucker for stories about space)

non fiction:

Lore of the Land - Jacqueline Simpson and Jennifer Westwood (A reference of english folk stories, one that I dip into very often, I would also recommend Jacquline Simpson's folklore of the discworld book she did with Terry because more discworld makes everything better)

The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs (because all that time freed up by not caring for romance is best served reading books about city planning in a different country from me over half a century ago. seriously though, it is a fascinating book)

@Holmbo, honestly I am still fairly amature at running these simpler RPGs so dont have that much to advise you, and I have no idea what style of story you want. but here's a little ramble which might give you a few ideas.

If you want to avoid setting up a complicated story these are a few i have played or gm'd. as I mentioned, laser kittens is a good example of this. Also I have a soft spot for lasers and feelings, basically it has a game rules and setup that lasts 1 page, so can easily be prepared quick, however it has a tendency to become too romantic for my tastes, which will be obvious why if you have a quick look at those rules. quest has a couple of good one shot ideas and only using one dice keeps setup fast. one last one I recommend is goblin quest just because it is amusing to watch people die a lot. it is childishly simple compared to other rpgs but is good fun, also can be done without a gm which is quite cool.

the thing i have found with setting up stories is that plotting out the campaign is the short bit. the bit that takes time is to fit the encounters into the rules. I have ran 1 custom dnd campaign and the thing that kept taking time was that any character was needing a set of stats for combat in case my idiots tried to fight them. picking reasonable enemies, rewards, all that for just one encounter massively upped the prep time. I ran basically the same story with a different group doing fate accelerated ruleset and the prep was far faster. (didnt work great unfortunately, fate is built for a less combat focused idea than dnd so i wasnt too happy with that story). if you want something that lets you create a story similar to what  then either quest or a fate based system is a good option.

Now these are in a completely different league to a long running dnd campaign, but if your friend just wants to try an rpg then this could be a good way to just get her, you and a couple of other people together for one night and play something fun without having to expect you to do the complex setup (also importantly, she doesn't get frontloaded with hours of rule reading and character creation which often puts people off getting into rpgs).

Since you have played expanse before one other option is to use the modern age ruleset (what expanse is based on). this is a longer setup than what i have described above but since you have some familiarity with the rules that would speed up the campaign design.

(sidenote, i have found each rule book for what i have mentioned here for free in some way or another, although that may not always be true)

ok, here's what i would say, i dont mind whether you would use it or not.

Accuracy:

From the small amount of media I have seen that involves aro characters I have found it to be fairly accurate. Generally the characters behave in a way i would say is sensible and i cannot think of a moment where i have seen aro representation and thought, wow that's silly, or found a glaring problem with it. However accurate is not the same as extensive, and I definitely think it is slightly dissapointing how little aro representation  have seen that explores, say allo aro experiences, or aros who enjoy romance in fiction, just showing some of the variance in aro experiences. One thing that seems  to happen all the time in aro spaces is people questioning their identity simply because they have these slight variations in their aromanticsm. like, doubting because they desire sex, or shipping fictional characters, or can enjoy some actions which are often seen as romance coded.

I suppose this is just a side effect of having such small amounts of representation but it can get frustrating.

Amount:

Having little representation in media is very annoying when it comes to explaining who you are. there is no moment where you can point to a character the person you are explaining too and say, like that. having a common reference point is really useful. I suppose the bigger point though is that it is much easier to find out about aromanticism if you hear the term than if you try hopefully searching your experience on your own. This finding out about aromanticism is really good, I reckon I would be far happier if I had found out about the identity earlier rather than going through my late teens/early 20s just thinking I could power through and make romantic love work for me. This is also something which I think has more of an impact on mental health than many give credit for. certainly I feel that my level of comfort in life was far greater after I came to terms with the idea that my lack of romantic attraction was not some terrible failure on the part of my personality.

On the other hand I am in a way happy. Little representation of generally decent quality is not a bad position to be in. I would rather that than a large amount of negative representation.

Lastly I suppose I am happy that representation in media is lacking rather than outright hostile, this is a much nicer situation than many identities have or have had.

To be honest what you write about not sharing some common aro experiences has very little to do with whether you are aro.that main problem you write about fits in fine with being aro. fine with romance stories, plenty of aros are. fine with shipping, plenty of aros are. didn't feel pressured to get into a relationship, theres a fair few aros in that situation as well, it just depends on your upbringing. the key questions are about whether you experience romantic attraction.

Also not feeling like you are different from those around you does not mean you are alike. I do not know how old you are now but I can read that school is a thing from your past. not many people from that age would say the last time they wanted a relationship was aged 9.

So no worries, doubting your aromanticism is fine but the fact that you dont share common aro experience doesnt invalidate you.

1 hour ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Not just as in "yeah maybe I'd do it if they asked", but as in "yes, sex with this person is something I want to do"

This is basically how i think about it as well.

@Robin.

What i would ask is this, would you consider asking that hypothetical person to have sex. If you would go out of your way to initiate that I would say you are likely to be allo aro.

As for why not women, I doubt that is anything to do with internalised mysogyny. maybe it is and i am being an idiot but i would say it is far more likely that you just are attracted to different genders in different ways and that is completely valid.

Hi

first,  what you describe sounds like being aromantic  to me. Those doubts are common to a lot of aros and I am sure many here feel that same pain.

As for where to go next, I would really recommend the AUREA FAQ on aromanticism which is often a good start for questioning whether you are aro, but is also a good validator. If you feel that some aspect of who you are causes you to doubt if you are aro there is a fair chance someone has already put it on there. It is linked at the top of this site.

For example to quote from it about romantic stories, which you mention:

So it might be a good option to allow you to work through some of those doubts, to get an understanding that your ideas of romance in fiction or seeing happy couples would not invalidate being aromantic.

Other than that, you already found this forum, so keep chatting to aros. 

for your mother's argument that you should experience more: I have no idea how to deal with responding to her, but just remembber that you are under no obligation to seek out experiences you dont feel comfortable with.

welcome. hope you enjoy being here.

good luck finding some aro symbols, I'm in pretty much the same boat, kind of want to start wearing aro related things to be more open about who i am, but not sure what to get. 

One thing I was recently reminded of is that whenever I would hear news about people leaving marriage to later in life or lower rates of marriage altogether my thoughts were of relief. I could put that off for longer. Kick it into the future, even though then I didn't fully comprehend that I was relieved because I just didn't want to marry altogether.