Holmbo

Regardless of if you're aromantic or not you have the right to stay single. And if it makes you happy don't mind if anyone else tells you otherwise. I recommend the podcast Solo which talks a lot about the positive sides of being single.

Maybe you already heard about this move but you didn't know about it's aroness. It's about Diana Nyad's quest to swim between Cuba and Florida. The most prominent supporting character is her best friend whom she enlist as her coach. There's no romance in this story at all.

One TW backstory with sexual assault (I can't find the eye thing to mark spoiler, is there a markup I could write instead?)

I'm sorry you have experience that. It's not your responsibility to educate or help her understand. If you want to avoid to respond angrily to her (not that you're not allowed to but it seems you want to keep from fighting with her) you could use non violent communication methods. https://images.app.goo.gl/rb9Wx6AwiPPmXS4D7

It's not a guarantee she'll respond any better on that but at least you'll seem reasonable and sympathetic to your other roommates.

On 11/15/2023 at 1:52 AM, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

What if it’s lip kissing in a sexual but non-romantic way?

Yeah maybe they are sex friends

You might be demi romantic

I suggest to not have topics from miscellaneous show up in the recent topics (if it's not too much work to change it). Because game threads which are very easy to comment on shows up a lot on the list of recently commented posts, and they kinda crowd out the other threads.

1 hour ago, hemogoblin said:

Considering we'd like to boost participation, feedback from folk who don't participate if most helpful, lol. 

Hehe yeah that makes sense. I just mean that even after learning what it was I haven't participated. So it's not like my ignorance was the hinder.

I haven't really participated so I don't know how useful my input is. One reflection I have though is I personally find the name confusing. It took very long until I understood what it was about, I thought it was some kind of physical event. So maybe that's keeping people from participating. But I don't have a blog or anything like that so maybe it's more known to people who are content creators. 

🍦

That's cool congrats! Which country are you in?

17 hours ago, Neon said:

this confused me forever too! I thought it was a jealousy thing lmao. People eventually explained that it's a betrayal of trust with your partner. You are going behind your partner's back, and violating one of the essential rules of the relationship.

Yes this is it. I don't understand why it's an essential rule that so many people have. To me I could think of a hundred other things that would be more important to me in a relationship than sexual monogamy. But this is why I identify as relationship anarchist.

If you don't care you could just go by the ones other people assume you have. And maybe with people who know you better or are more educated about pronouns you can tell them to use whichever they like.

I totally relate about not relating to cheating. Why is that considered to be such a deal breaker compared to other promises or priorities one could break.

The Midnight bargain is fantasy with really interesting world building. One of the side characters is aromantic. There's a romance plot in the book though. But also a lot of the book is about the main character trying to avoid marriage so that she can keep practicing magic so it feels pretty aro themed overall.

Thanks for sharing. Maybe reading on this forum will help you work things out more. You could also read fiction with aro ace characters and see if it resonates with you. Like Loveless or Summer Bird Blue.

Sounds exhausting. Hopefully things will get better for you once the allos have gotten used to being around the opposite sex?

Interesting article about an American survey about young peoples preferences for film and TV.
"the majority of adolescents aged 13-24 (51.5%) wanted to see more content centered around friendships and platonic relationships, rather than romantic ones. A near-majority (47.5%) said sex was not needed for the plot in most TV shows and movies, while 44.3% felt romance was overused in media. Nearly 39% wanted to see more aromantic or asexual characters on screen."

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/oct/25/gen-z-less-sex-tv-movie-trend?fbclid=IwAR06ebyT4IUqq_gcWQeYFJOYMKmrcYi-KHC6wMDxz5ao0LEsiX6df9bq4dE

I'm reading 1634: The Galileo Affair. It's the third book in the ring of fire series which is about some Americans getting transplanted back in time Germany during the 30 year war. The funny quirk of the book is an entire town gets transported so they have all the infrastructure and machines of the town.

I like all the focus on the cultural clashes between the different people and also the depiction of building institutions.

In the third book they're in Venice and not much have really happen so far. One of the pov characters is a love struck teenager who's pretty boring but other than that it's interesting. The pope seems to be up to something!

Thanks for sharing. I've not watched the show as I though some of the actors looked so old that it took me out of it.

Good advice @peggy

I just saw this poster and I thought I want this for my phone screen. It feels aro to me because of the colors and also somewhat a solo theme motive I think. What aro themed screen images do you like?

https://www.bga.se/cache/65/1200x1200-Posters_2022_4_Northern_Lights.jpg

On 10/14/2023 at 1:19 PM, nonmerci said:

I don't think so. It just that the media like the dichotomy "emotion vs intellect" and so selle the idea that those who are into "intellectual" stuff are less incline to romantic relaltionships because they are all about the mind. If you have a character that is good at science, it is likely that they'll have trouble expressing their emotions, but if the character is an artist, it will be the opposite. But in real life, it is a lot more nuance than that. You'll find people that fit the stereotypes of course, but also a tone who don't.

I think that's a good explanation of it.

For me I didn't really relate to her or Ken as I see their asexuality is due to them being children's toys. Their minds are basically that of a child. 

8 hours ago, hemogoblin said:

No worries! Honestly, I mentioned it because I had that line of thinking in the past as well, and it's a big part of the reason it took me so long to identify as apl. It's just become really strongly associated with the aro community, and I know it can be hard to break apart those connotations if no one addresses them directly. :)

No I'm not worried at all. I just found it interesting that I hadn't thought about platonic attraction in terms of allos.

On 10/14/2023 at 4:17 AM, castletalk said:

oh I LOVED this book! It was the most fun I've had with superhero-type stuff in a long time. plus i hadn't really thought of it through an aro lens before, but now im thinking it's not much of a stretch at all to read the main character as arospec/lithromantic.

Could be. For me it just matters that the friendship is presented as important.

Although now that I think about it there is a scene where the main character describes a romantic relationship and another says something like "is that what you think a relationship is?" So it does seem she's clueless about romance at least.