Dodecahedron314

17 hours ago, SoulWolf said:

So I contacted a long-lost friend on Facebook to ask how she's doing, and she says she's leaving her husband and starting over... and I'm sitting here Googling for things to say to someone in that kind of situation, because I don't have the faintest clue. All I can do is copy/paste. 

This happened when my then-roommate broke up with her longtime boyfriend last summer. I maintained a blank expression for a few seconds, realized I was supposed to react to the news in some way, and then awkwardly offered to buy her junk food from the vending machine downstairs. She laughed a little and said "You're being very Sheldon right now."

1 hour ago, Confidential_Con said:

I'd add Vriska to the list of trolls on the aro spectrum; her fixation with Tavros always read to me more as her attempts to emulate Mindfang and the Summoner than actual attraction to him, and I think Karkat even taunted her at one point about her not being able to truly hate-romance like normal trolls. In the new timeline she even says she's not interested in having any more relationships than her moirallegiance with Terezi.

 

I personally read her as demi in general; that'd explain the above, as well as her doomed-version's relationship with doomed!John (they'd already bonded a great deal beforehand), and as quoiromantic with regards to red and black romance.

Hmm, that's a very good point. There was also other-doomed!Vriska and Meenah, but that still doesn't discount her being demi, considering how long they spent wandering around all the doomed worlds together before that happened. (And I think at one point it's very briefly implied that non-doomed!Vriska also has something of a flush crush on Meenah? When Meenah is giving her speech to the ghost army? But I can't remember how the timing works with respect to her saying she's not interested in anything outside of her moirallegiance with Terezi--I think the timelines might have gotten switched around or something between those two incidents, but I can't remember for sure. Dangit, I might have to reread the bit leading up to Collide and rewatch Act 7 to refresh my memory on what exactly happened there.) tl;dr: Demi/quoiro Vriska headcanon accepted. 

Ah yes, looks like it's time for another episode of Dodec's Adventures in Being Extremely Aro Fandom Trash--this time, it's the Sherlock edition, because the friend who made me trash for it in the first place insisted on getting me caught up before Series 4 happens in January.

Because of how my romance repulsion is really inconsistent with what sets it off and when, I occasionally just kind of forget about it, until something like (S2E2 and S3E3 spoilers)

happens and I go "wow, yep, romance repulsion is still...very much a thing for me...okay showrunners can you stop now?!?".

Speaking of inconsistency, (S3E2 spoilers)

And for one that doesn't involve spoilers, I think I may have reached peak aro when one of my friends mentioned how angry their homophobic mom was when she found out that they drew Johnlock fanart, and I was extremely confused for the several hours it took me to realize that those syllables referred to the John/Sherlock ship, Johnlock, rather than the Enlightenment philosopher, John Locke.

@cute kitty Meow! Mewo! Join the crazy cactus person club 

My gender does weird things. For the most part I just plain don't have one, but every so often I suddenly get hit with feeling noticeably more masculine and it weirds me the heck out. A lot of the time I'll mentally and verbally refer to myself in masculine terms just to avoid feminine ones rather than because I identify with them specifically, but when my gender does the weird masc thing all of a sudden I feel connected to those on a specific positive level rather than "I don't care what words you use as long as they don't imply that I'm female", and I care a lot more about reading as male than reading as nothing in particular. It's just a very different state of mind in a way that I can't really explain. If I could, I would probably understand gender a lot more than I do.

@NullVectoryes, the Machine is dodecahedral--and if you read  Cosmos carefully,  you'll notice he played with the idea back then as well. (That section in general is why dodecahedra are kind of my thing,  because I very much enjoy the idea of Pythagoras freaking out at the very existence of a polyhedron. ) And yes, 314 is because pi. 

I've also been a huge Carl Sagan fan since high school, that was just a little more recent for me. I suppose maybe that made my becoming an astronomer somewhat inevitable, then--I mean, he's  practically a patron saint of the field.  

2 hours ago, NullVector said:

 

Ooh, nice one! I really need to read HDM again (I read it years ago, right after it came out actually, and I thought it was the BEST.BOOK.EVER )

I really liked the character of Mary too. Ended up studying particle physics as well, hah. I think it will be interesting to read her again in light of my recent aro discoveries. 

 

@Jade, have you read Carl Sagan's novel Contact? Again, this is coming from vague memories of something I read a long time ago, but I seem to recall Ellie Arroway as being a similar character to Mary Malone. Possible that she's aro too, but I really can't remember the book that well (she has a relationship with Palmer Joss, not sure if it was 'romantic' though. she seemed more interested in science than boys, lol). But I recall that there is a lot of stuff about science and religion in there too (much more so that the movie; the book was a lot more interesting). So you might like it  

My username came from this book, because it's the only thing I've ever read to have had such an impact on me for me to feel justified in classifying it as my favorite book, so I'll just kind of jump in here

I'd disagree with Ellie being aro (despite the magnificent pun potential...Aroway, get it? ), because in the book there was also the relationship she had with Ken der Heer, which seemed as though it might have been veering slightly more into romantic territory--though I, too, haven't reread it in quite a while because I'm busy trying to become Ellie myself, so I could be wrong. I haven't reread it since I realized I'm aroace, so I'll probably do so over winter break and see if that changes my reading of her. 

Also, seconded on the book being exponentially better than the movie--the movie literally wrote out half of the characters, including my favorite side character, and half the plot points. It also completely misses out on Carl Sagan's writing style, which is one of the best things in existence, just saying. 

On 4/15/2016 at 8:54 PM, Jade said:

My personal headcanon: all the prospit kids in homestuck are on the aro/ace spectrum. on the flipside, all of the derse kids are gay/bi/pan.

(specific headcanons: aro ace John, who figures out pretty quickly that he doesn't want a relationship. demi ace Jane, who wants a relationship but only rarely gets crushes, and only on friends, and who doesn't understand sexual attraction. romance-repulsed but bisexual Jake, who is attracted to Aranea and Dirk but never has a crush and hates being in a relationship. aro ace Jade, who is very affectionate and romance/sex-neutral but mostly just wants cuddles and a qpp/moirail. dave is pan; roxy is bi; rose and dirk are both gay)

 

Troll aromantic headcanons:

well this is a bit more complicated, because of the whole quadrants system; for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to define aromanticism as "does not want either kismesis or matespriteship"; if you include kismesis as compatible with aromanticism, this whole thing changes.

 

So here are my headcanons:

equius and aradia are aromantic

nepeta and tavros are on the spectrum (experience matespriteship but not kismesis) but not aro

terezi is also on the spectrum (experiences kismesis but not matespriteship) but not aro

Oh crap, I just re-found this post after having read the entirety of Homestuck this summer. 

I could totally see aroace John and Jade, and gay Rose, gay Dirk, and pan Dave are literally canon. 

Not entirely sure if Jane would be ace, but definitely demi, and I 100% agree with romance-repulsed bi aro Jake. Roxy is an interesting case--I could see her as demi/very dark gray in both respects, but definitely bi. 

Not fully convinced of Equius as aro, because he was trying for a matespritship with Aradia early on IIRC. Also, wasn't Terezi vacillating between quadrants with Karkat for a while? On the other hand, adding to the list of trolls on the spectrum, I don't recall Sollux, Kanaya, or Feferi being kismeses with anyone, or Gamzee having a matesprit.

Does anyone else ever get this thing where if they're squicked out by a relationship between characters in something like a TV show or podcast, they get even more squicked out if they find out that the actors who play those characters are in a relationship IRL as well? Because that's a weirdly specific thing that I've just encountered, and I was wondering if anyone else ever had that reaction.

This happened during a discussion with another person about my friend trying to find fanart of her favorite character for her phone wallpaper.

Me: "I mean, I became fandom trash for half a dozen things this summer, and I don't have fanart for any of my wallpapers." 

Person: "Well, when you have lots of fandoms, you can't pick just one, you know? It's like, this ship from this thing is amazing, but I also really love this ship from another thing, but this is just the cutest fanart of this ship from this other thing! Like that, you know?"

Me: "...No, actually I don't.  "

...Instance #42959268 of people having far different fandom priorities than I do.

2 hours ago, Mark said:

2 hours ago, Mark said:

  6 hours ago, Cassiopeia said:

I feel silly talking about wanting a QPP or using any kind of aro jargon irl. Its just so frustrating to choose between not telling the full truth and not being taken seriously.

I'm not sure that there is a simple answer here.
How do you translate things into "allo speak"?

Terms like "non platonic" or "non romantic" are likely to be just as confusing as "queer platonic".
Terms like "FWB" or "sexual friend" are likely to be misinterpreted as "sex only".

I've been calling my QPP my brother when referring to him around other people, because we've been close enough friends to consider ourselves siblings since long before either of us knew about the existence of QPRs. Makes it kind of confusing and needs clarification when I mention things like his family and it's clear that it's not my family, or how people kept on shipping us in high school, but I personally feel like it's easier to say "he's my brother whom I'm not actually related to" than to go through the entirety of Queerplatonic 101.

2 hours ago, LunarSeas said:

Even though I find I fit the aro spec more each day, I hesitate to call myself aromantic because I'm such a complete NERD for the romantic era poets and it's not exactly the same thing BUT WHY IS LANGUAGE HARD.

I have a similar problem with Romantic-era composers, even though I've vehemently and aggressively identified as aro ever since I found out the term existed.

Last night I had a dream that for some reason I was supposed to be in the wedding party of some random people, which I had absolutely no interest in, but then I found out that my role in the wedding party was to be the person taking care of the couple's incredibly tiny adorable kitten during the ceremony, and then I was totally fine with it because kitten!

If we're considering Tesla, we could also throw in Isaac Newton, who was also commonly assumed to be aroace for the same reason.

(I'm going to just pretend this isn't a double post because this thread hasn't been active for a month) 

So I just watched The Blind Banker (Sherlock S1E2) with a friend who's also possibly somewhere on the aro spectrum (quoi? demi? Neither of us are really sure), and when it got to the point where

, both of us immediately agreed that the entire situation could have been avoided if he had just been aroace and therefore precluded the possibility of a random shoehorned excuse for a romantic subplot that only existed for dramatic tension and plot convenience. 

11 hours ago, Mark said:

You could try this test. http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 127 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 83 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)

...Ah. Welp. That explains a lot...

The entire concept of marriage squicks me the heck out in a big way because romance repulsion, but even if some bizarro sequence of events were to happen that would make me okay with it (which is about as likely as me suddenly gaining the ability to phase through walls), I feel like anyone I would marry would almost certainly be the kind of person who would probably see it the same way I would and treat it more like a matter of paperwork a la filing taxes than any gigantic party-worthy life event.

10 hours ago, Mark said:

With there also being theories at these hormone exposures somehow determine sexual orientation.
So it's a sort of C causes A and B, thus there is a correlation between A & B.

In the process ignoring that "gender" is not a binary of "man" or "woman" nor is it the same thing as "sex".

Sexual orientation is not binary either. With polysexual and asexual people typically being ignored.

Yeah, i originally heard this in the context of AFABs with loinger ring fingers and AMABs with longer index fingers being more likely to be trans rather than gay. (Sorry for the typos, my tablet is messing up so i can't fix it)

I heard the finger length thing was related to how much estrogen/testosterone you were exposed to before birth--longer ring finger = more testosterone, longer index finger = more estrogen. I'd link to where I found that if it hadn't been hundreds of pages ago in an AVEN thread.

Agender AFAB aroace with longer ring fingers than index fingers. 

That moment when you realize that you've been roped into giving people relationship advice every day for the past three days even though you're the literal least qualified person on the planet for that and you just kind of sit there for about 5 minutes, staring at a wall in disbelief and wondering how on Earth your life came to this. 

I'm from the same part of America that Danny's currently living in (the hot dry bit), but I haven't actually lived there in years--I spent the past four years in the hot humid bit of America, and now I'm living in the cold* windy bit  There's a lot of variation between places here, mostly because the US is just so darn big. The hot dry bit where I grew up is 2000 or so miles away from the hot humid bit where I went to high school, and the hot humid bit is another 1100 miles from the cold windy bit where I am now, which in turn is about 500 miles from the cold less-windy bit where I technically live when I'm not in the cold windy bit for college. And all of those large amounts of miles are in different directions. (Also, using Imperial units rather than the metric system is THE WORST. Just throwing that out there.)

* (which also gets really hot in the summer for no reason, but because it's the cold windy bit, a lot of the buildings don't bother to have air conditioning, which makes life difficult)

An interesting thing about America: political leanings, levels of religiosity, and tolerance of others are very much geographically distributed. Generally, the farther south and/or east you go, the more conservative and religious and intolerant the majority of people tend to be, and the farther north and/or west you go, the more liberal and tolerant the people become. This is, of course, just a generalization--there are certainly liberal people/areas in the South and conservative people/areas up North--but broadly speaking, it's a general trend that's just sort of taken for granted here.

(Also, we have the somewhat problematic tendency to just call ourselves "America" rather than just "the US" because most people just kind of forget about the existence of Canada, Mexico, and the entirety of Central and South America on a daily basis.)

I've played clarinet for...8 years now?? I've also attempted guitar (moderately successfully) and ocarina (decidedly less successfully), I picked up percussion last year for pep band to fill in for our snare drummer who was out of town for a big performance, and I'm currently attempting to teach myself baritone (also for pep band, because our low brass currently consists of exactly one tuba and that's it) and piano.

In short, I am a hopeless band geek. 

Tfw your extremely straight not-very-close friend is better at picking up on how uncomfortable you get when people kiss in front of you than the couple of fairly close friends, both of which are generally more educated about aromanticism, whom you literally live with >.<

1 hour ago, techno-trashcan said:

@Dodecahedron314 I think I may have found it for you, is this it?

http://theasexualityblog.tumblr.com/post/146220597456/the-actual-meaning-of-the-word-aplatonic

Yes, this looks familiar, I think this is it. There might have been a similar post somewhere else, but this is essentially what I was talking about.

So my apartmentmate recently subjected me to the movie Birdemic, which I really only agreed to because of the hilariously bad trailer with awfully animated birds and explosions. The movie itself spends probably 45 minutes on pointless exposition involving the main protagonists and their "romantic" date. At one point I got fed up and said, "I'm not here for straight people, I'm here for explosions!" 

1 minute ago, ArodynamicallyFavored said:

would you like me to have the thread closed Dodec?

I should probably try and find tbe source I was talking about again in order to make sure I'm not misinterpreting it, my post was essentially more of an FYI than anything--and I'm certainly not one to tell people outright what terms they can or can't use, it was just something I recalled about the original spirit of the term.