Dodecahedron314

I was under the impression from the source of the term that it was originally meant to be used only in the sense of aplatonic as a descriptor of specifically aro people who don't feel inclined toward queerplatonic relationships, and that's all--I think I even remember the creator of the term specifically asking people not to affix other prefixes to it like would normally be done with other orientations because it would confuse the issue and give those people on Tumblr who always say "but that's just being friends, you don't need a label for that" ammunition, but I'm not certain and it's been so long since I've seen the post that I'm pretty sure I've lost the post by now. It might be googleable though? 

On 8/3/2016 at 6:17 AM, SwankyPants said:

nope lol. Misfile and Go Get a Roomie! are the two I was talking about. and the honorable mention is Questionable Content. 

Misfile was one of the ones I was considering reading after I got caught up on Ignition Zero over the weekend, but I haven't started it yet. I've heard of the other two, but haven't looked into them.

14 hours ago, SwankyPants said:

well then. That feeling when two of the comics you follow on the same day have a romantically charged strip and you feel a little disconnected. 

 

this other one I'm following is on a plot line between two characters. and I am hoping that the direction the writer is going is down a close friendship path, not romance... so far they've taken it a long way without sending of any romance flags so I'm hopeful. but still nervous. 

 

although I confess I'm a little bit pleased that all three of these plots are between girls hehe. I feel represented or something. boys drool! teehee. (kidding, boys! you rock!)

 I was just going to post about this, because the same thing happened to me! I don't think they're the same comics, though, because only one of the romances is between girls (and it's definitely been written as a romance and not a friendship, unfortunately). The ones I was going to post about are Supernormal Step and Girl Genius, which ones do you read? 

Why is egregious and obtrusive PDA in romantic relationships a thing? It's happened multiple times where I will actively be having a conversation with someone and their romo-person just comes up to them and starts putting their face all over them, apropos of absolutely nothing. I don't know what sets it off and it's honestly really disconcerting. Bonus points if, like most of these instances, it's happened multiple times and continues to happen directly in front of me and other people despite the fact that I am quite clearly and visibly really frickin' uncomfortable with all of this. 

On 7/25/2016 at 9:22 PM, shotinthehand said:

an appropriate face to make when romantic drama is introduced

Spock making this face is honestly the best thing about most of the first season (yes, I know this particular example is from season 2), because at that point the majority of the episodes still had lots of what I call "unnecessarily allo moments", but Spock being there to essentially demonstrate my exact reaction made it worthwhile.

Also: humidity is very much a factor here. I grew up in Arizona, and I would be fine even if it was 95F out...because it's a desert. Whereas in Florida,it would be 80 degrees and I'd be about to melt into a puddle of aro nerd because the humidity never drops below 50 or 60%.

1 hour ago, Zemaddog said:

That doesn't make any sense. If you think it's hot, why don't you wear like a t-shirt and shorts or something? Why are you calling it hot, and yet wearing clothes reserved for weather that's moderately cool?

 

I do this as well, and in my case there are two reasons: one, because I have a job where even if people occasionally do wear shorts, I personally feel awkward if I did because some people consider it "unprofessional" or whatever and I don't generally wear shorts to class or work anyway...which is mostly due to reason two: people have lots of stupid gendered expectations for certain aspects of personal appearance e.g. body hair, and because I don't pass as literally anything other than a cis girl, I know I'm going to get judged for not conforming to those expectations so I just avoid the situation altogether by wearing long pants.

If I didn't have an academic job (which I'm probably underqualified for) in which I felt the constant need to prove myself to be professional and competent and "normal" because I'm just an undergrad, and in which I'm not sure how well being out as trans would go? I wouldn't care. But that's not the case, so...yeah.

When I was in high school in Florida and I told people I was going to college in Chicago, everyone said "but it's so coooooooold there!"

Yes, it is indeed cold in Chicago. There was a solid week where the temperature didn't get above -20F this winter.

But you know what? That was still INFINITELY preferable to a single day of existing in Florida in the summer.

(Of course, currently the weather in Chicago is actually hotter than where I was in Florida, and unlike Florida, Chicago still thinks it can get away with having buildings--like, say, my apartment--without air conditioning, which is monumentally Not Okay.)

I just got done playing Undertale, and when I encountered the

, I was simultaneously very perplexed and going "well, I mean, this makes exactly as much sense as IRL dating, so why not?]

Another INTJ here.

Me: "Oh, look, <singer I like> has a new album!"

Album: *entire first half is about singer kicking himself for staying in the "friendzone"*

Me: "...really? Why? Just why? And also WHY???"

1 hour ago, Vega said:

What happened in Civil War? Was it just the slightly creepy Steve-hooks-up-with-girlfriend's-grandniece thing?

Yes. The most pointless half-arsed romantic sub-subplot I've ever seen. They literally interacted TWICE. There was absolutely no reason for that to be a thing, ever. Plot relevance? Nope. Character development? Nope. Something that anybody would have ever shipped before it actually happened? Nope. Introduction of a vaguely important character? Nope. Any relevance whatsoever to pre-existing canon? To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, nope. That leaves exactly ZERO compelling and valid reasons for that to be included at all.

Sorry, I get very ranty about Marvel movies in general in this respect.

8 hours ago, Vega said:

I think Marvel has been quite decent about that. Stuff like Stark/Pepper Potts worked because it felt organic, they didn't even get together until the second (?) movie and even then the romance wasn't a huge part of the film.

Jane Foster has always been the thing I really hated about the Thor films.

I mean, you're a "world famous astrophysicist." You are literally taken across the cosmos to a world which humanity has never seen and yet she doesn't even seem to give a crap. You'd think any scientist would be rushing to gather any little bit of info about this new world but nope. Even in Thor 1 she was completely pointless and I also wish they would have left out the romance.

Correction: Marvel had been decent about it...and then Age of Ultron and Civil War happened. (I will never stop being salty about what happened in Age of Ultron.)

Agender polyhedron reporting for duty. Not attracted to anybody, but whenever someone's attracted to me, it gives me pretty bad dysphoria, because I don't pass and so I know the person is expecting assigned gender roles out of me in a romantic context, which is just not OK on any level in existence. 

In general, as a romance-repulsed aro, shipping is just all the nope. I would be a lot more active in a lot of fandoms of it wasn't for how shippy they all are. I do occasionally ship characters queerplatonically, or even in a best-friends-but-not-queerplatonic way, but even that's kind of rare--I tend to focus a lot more on the actual plot and universe of something than which characters could be in some sort of relationship. 

Real life shipping? That's a thing people do? NOPE NOPE NOPE. 

6 hours ago, Louis Hypo said:

Yep! For me I just don't give a damn about many physical things or feelings. I live in a pure abstract castle in the land of Hypothetica 

I very much relate to this. As far as I'm concerned, I might as well be a Boltzmann Brain.

For some ungodly reason, my dorm has a subscription to Cosmopolitan, and the new issue came in yesterday. As is the custom, someone immediately picked it up and started reading it aloud in the common room, and there was a quiz on attitudes toward romance, which we all took collectively. The questions were all about how you would react to romantic situations like a couple PDAing in Starbucks or a celebrity couple breaking up, with three multiple-choice options to where one was negative, one was slightly positive, and one was extremely positive. Because the negative ones were often worded in the most amusing way, everyone picked the negative ones as a joke. At the end of the quiz, the conclusion was that we all hated romance and needed to "do some self-searching to find our happiness", because, you know, we'll never find a man like that.  Then I just said loudly, "I've already found my happiness, and that's being a romance-repulsed aro!", because I don't know about the rest of the room, but that was certainly how I interpreted the description given at the end of the quiz...everyone else was joking about picking the negative options, but I certainly wasn't! 

I always thought it was pretty clear that I've always been one of the most flagrantly aro people in existence, but I guess it wasn't as obvious to my parents somehow, because when I came out to my mom it took several rounds of explanation for her to get that yes, there's a difference between aro and ace, and yes, I'm both...and then used it as ammunition with respect to my dad shortly after they split up in an argument that he wasn't even remotely part of. Then there was my dad, who kept on bringing up the inevitability of me getting a boyfriend whenever we would have a conversation about the future, until I finally came out to him on accident the last time he asked about it. (To his credit, after he'd asked me about boys and I'd flippantly said "No, that's not a thing for me" like I always do since I'm so used to being extremely out with my friends and then proceeded to quietly panic because I'd never planned on coming out to him, he just calmly said "What about girls?", which was more progressive than I'd been expecting from somebody who still occasionally uses "gay" in the same sense a 12-year-old boy uses it, and when I said no to that, he just kind of verbally shrugged and said "eh, as long as you're happy." I'm hoping that'll be the last I hear of it from him...it probably won't be, but I can hope.)

7 hours ago, RedNeko said:

 

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Oh no, really? I really liked the idea of them being friends and finding connection to each other through being to beings of incredible power, and supporting each other through any rocky parts of their reletionship with society. I suppose a romantic relationship doesn't have to erase that, but I imagen it would overshadow it because that's such a common thing to happen.

 

Well, that's what I was hoping for with Black Widow and Hulk, especially based on how they interacted in the first movie...and we all know how THAT ended up. 

 I have hope that they won't do the same thing here, but after Age of Ultron and that ridiculous shoehorned moment in Civil War, I know better than to be 100% optimistic about this sort of thing by now.

On Tuesday, May 03, 2016 at 1:46 PM, artemis said:

I really like the idea of Scarlett Which being aro.

Civil War spouiler: (sorry for the typo, my phone is being annoying and I can't edit this for some reason because the mobile site hates me)

If you're all right with "kid movies" (although really the only things that make this a kid movie are the facts that it's from Pixar and the protagonist is 14; the storyline isn't juvenile at all and it deals with some really deep issues in a really touching way), I highly recommend Big Hero 6. I just saw it this week with my ace club, and it was picked specifically because all of the movies we were considering had NO romance whatsoever. Not one couple, not one kissing scene, not even one subtle indication of a crush. I think that's one of the first movies I've seen in literally years that I can say that about. 

And another one I just remembered: the made-for-TV two-part screen adaptation of Terry Pratchett's novel Hogfather. At this point, it's my family's traditional Christmas movie, so it's not exactly seasonally relevant right now, but definitely one to keep in mind. 

Another recent one I forgot about: my university has a thing where you can go and be a guinea pig for psychological studies and get paid, so I did a bunch of those last week. One of them involved a question-and-answer thing where I was the one getting asked the questions, and one of the preset questions to be asked was "what would your ideal romantic partner be like?" Needless to say, I gave the experimenter a piece of my mind as politely as possible. And added it to the "other comments" section of the experiment feedback form. And nagged the experimenter about it a little more. And ranted about it to a friend who had also taken the same study--and, apparently, had had to keep from cracking up when she was asked that question because of the mental image of my probable reaction.
So yeah. I was just ever so slightly salty about that.

On 5/5/2016 at 4:23 PM, Spud said:

I have to read Romeo and Juliet next year for ninth grade. I hope I won't get this assignment because apparently it seems popular O_o

My assignment for freshman English when we read R&J was to participate in a Facebook group (well, fake educational Facebook, but you get the point) where we were all given characters to portray and interact with everyone like we were that character. I got Prince Escalus, which was fitting, because he's just sitting around there pointing out how ridiculous the entire thing is while everyone else is running around killing each other and making fools out of themselves. Of course, the online interactions that were supposed to at least be vaguely plausible with respect to how the characters act in the play wound up with all the popular kids launching a rebellion against me, led by Benvolio or Mercutio (I don't remember which), who was being represented by this guy who was just generally an aggravating person in the way that 9th graders often are, so that was that.

The perfect anecdote to describe my thoughts on the matter happened just today: As I was leaving my dorm with a bunch of friends on the way to dinner, there was a little kid running around on the quad with no immediately obvious adult presence (a moment later we saw two women standing off to the side, so don't worry, the kid was fine and not actually abandoned or anything). One of my friends said jokingly, "Oh, no. Is this is an abandoned kid? Is <our dorm> going to have to raise this kid now?" I responded, "No, don't worry, I know a volcano we can sacrifice it to." (Note: worry not, no small children were sacrificed in the making of this post. And yes, that was an exaggeration, I don't actually dislike small children enough to sacrifice one to a volcano. Almost, but not quite, because basic human morality.)

I blame that specific joke on the fact that in high school, as part of their psychology class, one of my friends conditioned their little siblings to start chanting "Sacrifice! Sacrifice!" whenever they held one up over their head. This same friend also once made the Tumblr post "Reblog to support sacrificing my significant other to a volcano", which got an amusingly high number of notes. I had interesting friends in high school.

Occasionally a turn of phrase comes into my mind and some part of me goes "hey, I could totally turn that into a pickup line", and every so often I wonder what it would be like to write characters who flirt with each other, mostly because I'm a sucker for witty repartee and terrible puns. Because that's what flirting is, right?...right?

Also, super awkward intrusive thoughts. Definitely not attraction, because there's no actual feeling attached to them, but just occasionally the thought of "technically it would probably be physically possible to kiss this person right now", which is just weird in the extreme because no way does that even remotely make sense as a thing that would ever happen involving me. More just kind of recognizing that the possibility exists on some level, and getting super weirded out by it.