Dodecahedron314

Just now, Apathetic Echidna said:

I used to want to date lots of boys from the surrounding private schools so I could have a collection of school blazers in my wardrobe......but I don't think that is the same thing....maybe I got caught up in the trope fandom in my own aro way....

To be perfectly honest, if I weren't romance-repulsed, dating someone for the express purpose of stealing their nice clothes is totally something I could see myself doing. I just have a weakness for really nice jackets, okay?

If you squint, the romantic subplot in the new Wonder Woman movie is minor enough that it's pretty easy to ignore. It's still there (for like 30 seconds), but it's definitely not as egregious as pretty much any other superhero movie I've seen recently.

The ASAPScience Tumblr knows what's up.

Someone once referred to one of my friends as my "other half", but I figured she was just saying that because I hung out with that friend a lot, and it was at a conference where we were doing a lot of the same events so we were rarely in different places. Now I have to wonder if she was implying that we were dating...?

On 4/2/2017 at 4:05 PM, Blair said:

Looking at a song title and thinking "maybe this song is not about romance..."

 

and being disappointed 45 seconds later

I had such high hopes for this song, and then nope.

23 hours ago, starstuff said:

I'm actually still terrified of this an adult because all those romance movies seem to imply that surprise kissing is a good thing.  I may actually punch someone's teeth out if they ever did that to me because I'd feel so violated.

Would they even have teeth left to punch out after that, though? I've never understood how this is supposed to work without one or both parties needing some serious dental work afterwards. Mashing one's face onto another person's face with reckless abandon and no warning seems like a surefire way to chip or lose some teeth, especially if the person tries to instinctively flinch/jerk away, as would be perfectly reasonable in this situation.

On 5/1/2017 at 8:29 PM, Galactic Turtle said:

Hmm... well... I guess one thing is I always try to think about the purpose of a romantic relationship and I do that by looking at my friends who are mostly all in one or have been in one before. My friend right now is very worried that when her boyfriend moves to Japan for a year, he won't be able to support her "emotional needs." Right now they still live in separate time zones (Chicago vs. New York) but apparently Japan makes this different. So that got me thinking about who supports my "emotional needs" I suppose. I ask my parents for advice on things and sometimes I also ask my friends for advice and appreciate candid responses. I rant sometimes and appreciate someone listening. I don't see why someone being in Japan (one of my best friends has lived in Taiwan for quite some time now and we talk daily) would prevent them from giving advice or listening to rants. She later specified that she likes to be doted on and "feel loved" which is something I can't relate to and have difficulty understanding. I "feel loved" by my friend in Taiwan and my parents in Philadelphia. Distance doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. 

To be fair, I can say from experience that past a certain point, time zones definitely start making a big difference--I'm currently in Paris, my QPP is in Florida, and one of my other best friends is in Chicago, and it makes communicating a lot more difficult, especially when all of us have our own schedules to attend to. I've still managed to stay fairly close to them, though, so the argument that distance makes it impossible to fulfill "emotional needs" doesn't quite hold water. (Of course, it could be argued that in order to have emotional needs one has to have emotions in the first place, a concept which is questionably applicable to me at best, but that's neither here nor there...)

2 hours ago, ApeironStella said:

I confess that I actually low key fear being so close friends with non-aro people. I just... seem to put a wall in between them and myself when I recall they are not aro, to protect myself from being a lot more hurt if they end up in a relationship.

Honestly, I really relate to this. I'm...I suppose lucky in a sense?...because most of the people I wind up being drawn to being really close friends with are generally somewhere on the aro spectrum. But honestly that little bit of "spectrum" even scares me a bit...I don't know, it's probably partially because I'm a bit paranoid/anxious by nature, partially because I sort of view my friends like a found family even when it's realistically probably unlikely that we'll all wind up sticking together just because of where we are in life (what happens after we graduate from college, if there's even still a future for us to have with the way the world is going right now? There's just no way to know, especially seeing as we all want to do rather different things with our lives), and partially because (perhaps contradictorily) it's hard for me to let myself entertain the possibility that other people could really be similarly uninterested in the whole romance partner thing, because for the longest time I thought I was the only one. I dunno, this kind of turned into a ramble, sorry.

So I'm studying abroad in France right now, and on the first day of my French class I was so visibly uncomfortable with the idea of the cheek-kiss-greeting-thing that's apparently a thing that people do here that the professor called me out on it. Nice.

On 2/26/2017 at 8:25 PM, Mezzo Forte said:

^ Back in my high school days, I was dubbed the "clarinet traitor" for quite some time for switching to percussion. I still love listening to the clarinet, but just don't like the sensation of playing it. (Heck, I find myself playing percussion for clarinet ensembles quite a bit. I even played percussion for a clarinet choir album last year.)

We often made this joke about one of my friends in high school, who started off on clarinet but played pretty much every instrument and would play whatever was necessary for any ensemble she was in (and also wound up being drum major senior year). Of course, the irony is that my college pep band is freaking tiny, and the clarinet section is the biggest section (with a grand total of 3 people on a good day) and therefore is the most able to spare a person to play something else, so guess who wound up being that person now... *hides snare sticks*  

However, I am of the firm belief that "once a clarinet, always a clarinet", no matter what instrument you wind up playing more frequently. 

3 hours ago, anzu2snow said:

I've been playing the clarinet since I was 10. Was in concert band, pep band, marching band, and pit orchestra in high school. Marching band in college until I almost (never found out if I did) broke my tailbone. Walked differently ever since, but I really miss it. 

 

Now I just play for myself. For me, it's calming and boosts my self esteem. I would like to start a klezmer band some day. I also played fiddle about a year before I started playing the clarinet. Before that, the recorder.

Yes, another one, join the clarinet army! 

My RH just decorated my dorm's common room with a bunch of super gaudy cutesy Valentine's Day stuff (she does this for every holiday, to be fair), and someone walked in and said delightedly, "Oh look, love is in the air!"

I immediately responded with "Oh god no, someone get the air freshener."

I confess that even though I've had to help several friends through relationship issues and breakups at this point, my default response when someone comes to me crying about their romantic problems is still to unconsciously acquire a horrified deer-in-headlights facial expression and nervously offer them junk food to make them feel better because oh god why is water leaking out of your face about something I don't understand please help what do???

1 hour ago, Untamed Heart said:

Side note - when you live in trousers and wear a skirt once in a blue moon, and people who witness it say "now we can see your legs". Like, what? You can't see my legs when they're neatly partitioned by snug fitting fabric, but you can see them under this thing that reaches the floor and barely touches them at the sides? 

I got this from my English teacher when she was one of the chaperones at prom. Why the heck do people think it's ever going to be anything other than a.) pointless, and b.) extremely awkward, to say something like this to someone? (I mean, the only reason I even wore a dress to prom in the first place was out of solidarity with my QPP, who would've been forced to wear a dress if he'd gone because his family was being really awful about his gender. Otherwise, I would have just straight-up worn a suit, or whatever approximation thereof I could've thrown together out of the vests and dress pants I had because I wasn't out yet and didn't have any money.)

Speaking of which, what is it with the whole obnoxiously gendered prom culture thing? Is that a thing outside the US? Because here, at least, the amount of expectations of conventional femininity that are attached to the whole affair is more than a little horrifying. Just flip through a prom dress catalog or talk to a "normal" high school senior, I swear it's like the whole thing is some sort of cult initiation ceremony or something.

2 hours ago, Holmbo said:

 

Maybe if they don't give people what they want they'll love it even more though. Like when Game of Thrones started the trend of killing of the characters people rooted for. Maybe some show will do the equivalent to romantic love. Every potential romantic story will just crash and burn.

In all honesty, if I had the energy and time to devote to writing that I wish I did, I would do this in everything I wrote. If non-aro writers have gotten the satisfaction of nattering on and on about their favorite set of emotions for practically the entire history of media, then I should definitely have the right to exact some degree of schadenfreude-y satisfaction from crushing their shipping dreams. 

@Ace of Amethysts I'm definitely aware of that, and I'm definitely aware that most people are somehow okay with this (though even the non-aro people I know who have watched it have huge problems with the specific example I was ranting about). That doesn't make me any less bitter about it. 

39 minutes ago, Philbo Wiseroot said:

5 hours ago, Dodgypotato said:

The majority of fans for that kind of stuff go crazy for someone turning someone who seemingly hates romance into a romantic soppy git

Aren't a good portion of his fans teen girls because Doctor Who?

...Moffat has fans??? I've yet to encounter anyone who watches anything he's involved in and hasn't gone off on him at least once. Although to be fair, his episodes of Doctor Who *before* he took over the show were fantastic, at least. (I'm not far enough into the show to pass judgement on what he's done as the showrunner, but considering I'm told there's an entire season that's basically just not worth watching, my hopes for something as magnificent as The Doctor Dances or Blink aren't too high.)

Also, the trope @Dodgypotato mentioned is just one more of the infinite fiendish tentacles of amatonormativity. "Everyone has the capacity for ~*~romantic looooooove~*~ inside them, they just have to meet that ~*~special person~*~ and ~*~open up their heart~*~!!!!11!!!1!" How. About. NO. You're not wresting away one of the most relatable characters I've ever encountered, who's relatable specifically for the exact reason that you're trying to erase. Stoppit. Stop that right now.

I confess that, as an aroace, I'm honestly feeling a little bit personally attacked by the amatonormative/allonormative bits of the most recent two episodes of Sherlock. Specifically:

The Lying Detective (S4E2):

The Final Problem (S4E3):

Here, have the two things that have been stuck firmly in my head for the past week for some reason: 

Science and fandoms...honestly, a pretty accurate representation of the contents of my brain at any given point.

19 hours ago, Holmbo said:

I confess that when I make plans for my future a huge part of it is ensuring I won't be alone too much, because I think that might turn me weird(er). And that I sometimes worry about friends or just people in general that spend much time alone and feel like it's not good for them.

I totally understand this, actually. For all my ridiculous amounts of introversion, I've also come to realize at this point that when left to my own devices for too long and cut off from other people, my mind basically turns into an echo chamber and the reverberations all interfering with each other make a mess out of the whole situation pretty quickly, if that makes sense. Much as I logically should be totally fine with being a hermit, experience tells me otherwise, and so I've been forced to admit that I have to factor other people into my plans in some way, shape, or form.

Let's just say there are many reasons why I've always described myself as "flamboyantly aro", and I have yet to get a surprised reaction from anyone after coming out to them: 

• When I was a little kid, my mom was apparently 100% certain that I would grow up to be a lesbian, because at one point I'd asked her if it was possible to marry a girl because I didn't like boys. (Her response was "Well...maybe in California?") The part that she didn't realize was that I'd asked this question because 4-year-old me was under the impression that marrying someone just meant that they were your best friend to the point that you wanted to live with them, and 4-year-old me didn't have any male friends, so of course that logically meant that I would wind up marrying a girl, because that's how that works, right? (Of course, the amusing part is that I wound up being in a QPR and will probably move in with my QPP after we both graduate, so maybe 4-year-old Dodec knew what's up after all.) 
• I had a male best friend in 4th grade, and I couldn't understand why we weren't allowed to have sleepovers at each other's houses like everyone else was allowed to with their best friends. (Sadly, our parents' concern was probably well-founded, considering that friendship ended after he started chasing me around the playground trying to kiss me, which I knew even back then was something I was 100% not okay with. Thankfully, small tomboy Dodec had great stamina after being in tae kwon do for 2 years at that point.) 
• The argument I still have about once a year with my friend from grade school, regarding someone I knew in 8th grade: "X liked you." "No, he didn't, he hung out with me because I was literally the only person who talked to him and didn't run away when he approached them." "Nope, X definitely liked you."  
• Sometimes when I was down about not having anyone I could really relate to in early high school, and high school in general just not going anywhere, I would fantasize about meeting my socially-mandated Someone who's Out There for Everyone in college and sitting on a roof and having intellectual conversations and looking at the stars until all hours of the night...and that was *all* we did. Even back when I still thought I was a straight cis girl, my idea of romance contained zero actual romance. 

17 hours ago, Ace of Amethysts said:

@Dodecahedron314 Posted something you regretted? Welcome to me.

Neither I nor the post that was formerly an awkward negative paragraph from 3am and is now a single period have any idea what you're talking about...  

.

My definition of TV is "bouncing between ~5 different long-running sci-fi shows on Amazon Prime, all of which I'm years or decades behind on and will probably not be fully caught up on anytime soon". 

Also..."non-pay" TV? There's TV you...don't have to pay for??? Is this an Aussie/UK thing, or...?  As far as I'm concerned, that's what podcasts are for--sure, there's no visual aspect, but they're all free, and vastly better-written than the overwhelming majority of TV shows in my opinion, because they're written by small production teams of actual people rather than gigantic media conglomerates that care more about making money than telling a good story. As a matter of fac--*hook appears out of thin air and yanks Dodec off the soapbox plastered with podcast logos they pulled out of nowhere*

1 hour ago, Zemaddog said:

Unless you're up north, Australia usually has dry heat. It's rare for it to go above 50% humidity at 30°C where I live for example (although it did just that today >.>). I will agree that humid heat is not  great, but dry heat is top notch. 

*quickly googles temperatures* Yikes. Even 50% humidity is too much for me at 30C. The humidity makes a huge difference, yes...but unfortunately up here, dry heat is far rarer than the alternative. Hence, my point about summer being The Actual Worst still stands. (I still have a vendetta against the entire season thanks to having to do my first year of marching band camp in a heat index that, with 95% humidity, worked out to be...*googles again* 45.5C, or 114F for you 'Muricans.)

1 hour ago, Zemaddog said:

1 hour ago, aussiekirkland said:

Anything over 20C is death for me, so that's fine by me!

And you call yourself an aussie... 

I am disappointed. 

As someone who lived in Arizona for most of their life and still can't handle anything above 75F when it's more than ~40% humidity out, I can confirm that being from a desert wasteland does not automatically grant you any amount of tolerance for hot weather. And if you question my Arizonanness, I will sic my cactus on you. 

4 hours ago, Louis Hypo said:

(en Français) "A life without love is like a year without summer,"

 

...fuck off

I absolutely hate summer, so honestly I'm fine with this arrangement. Call me strange, but I hate anything involving 85F+ weather and 90% humidity. I'll take my -25F winter over that any day.