DeltaAro

I have an M.Sc. in mathematics. Does that count as science (it's not empirical...) 🙂❓

I'm a software developer now.

4 hours ago, Nix said:

Wow I never knew they were called that, I've been rolling D20's for years. So maybe some cats playing Dungeons and Dragons?

Lol, DnD is a "platonic activity" I guess. 🙃

It's mathematically proven that there are exactly five of them. They appear in Plato's dialogue Timaeus.

He had some strange ideas about them. The dodecahedron is the shape of the universe as a whole. And the atoms of the elements are shaped according to the remaining ones: earth = cube, water = icosahedron, air = octahedron, fire = tetrahedron. 🤪

11 hours ago, organs and bone said:

@DeltaAro hahaha forgot to tag u

Not necessary. Just was busy yesterday, sorry for replying so late.

12 hours ago, organs and bone said:

YES I will :) any ideas for a scene or a pose?

Has someone drawn cats playfully jump around platonic solids (dodecahedron, icosahedron, ...)? Probably not. So that would be nice, some very subtle appreciation for platonic love. 🙂

Or cat eating ice cream , of course.

Just suggestions, I equally appreciate your own ideas. 💚

Cats, plz!

Oh, that's going to be great, I'm sure!!

I'm now reading "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards.

Many love it, many hate it ... it's nicely written but I can't yet say if the method really works in practice.

BTW, there is an endless amount of drawing books ... the pardox of choice.

Everybody on Reddit really hates Christopher Hart's books, but on Amazon they all have 5/5 stars with thousands of reviews. Admittedly I'm also a bit suspicious since he published like 100 books, about all kind of styles. From Manga to Furry-drawing.😮

Then many recommend Burne Hogarth's book. A very technically skilled artist, for sure, but his style is very ... extreme. It's also too advanced.

On 12/27/2023 at 8:11 PM, Nix said:

The cover is pretty clear about it being a queer book, I hope that is not a problem.

What a lovely cover!

Zero Two is an Aro Ally

CC BY 4.0

PS: the complete failure to draw anime style is embarrassing. I would have thought the skills transferred better, but no, this is something totally different.

4 hours ago, Armored frog said:

so i was scrolling around, and read that a few of you also like to draw and stuff, so i thought why not make a little thread for sharing drawings, and maybe making fanart of eachothers OCs, idk just have some fun

We already have one here, but I guess it was a good idea to create a new one.

4 hours ago, Armored frog said:

so please reply with some fun doodles or something :)

OK, I try to do one, hopefully before the ASAW runs out (oops Saturday).

4 hours ago, Armored frog said:

 

This is great! You're very talented!

Most people see romantic and sexual attraction as essentially related, like round and spherical are. They assume the same desire behind it, and romantic love + sex is just the good, wholesome manifestation of it while sex alone is the shallow, fraught and dangerous one.

So aromanticism (alone) is perhaps not striking or conspicuous enough, since allo-allos often experience sexual attraction without romantic attraction. Even if people recognized they're different, they may think of it as a mere character defect, not a legitimate orientation.

This leads fewer people to identify with it, and in turn it remains relatively unknown.

That said, I don't think it's that obscure. We've come a long way in the past few years.

On 2/18/2024 at 3:59 AM, MondoBilby said:

Update: Here’s the drawing I made for the week :D

Not my best work, but it’s cute enough :)

So cute!! Is that the aro Pokémon, LOL?

On 2/8/2024 at 4:09 AM, N1GHTM4R3 said:

I just saw an aro-gator

This is great, thanks for sharing!

I searched for a higher resolution version.

Here there are even more!

On 2/4/2024 at 6:15 PM, Ekaterina said:

I think that to create something actually interesting with an AI you'd need first time come up with an interesting request, which is a type of human creativity.

There sure are creative prompts.

But when you use a random computer-generated prompt, the generated image may still be interesting, at least for me it sometimes is. And that's 100 % without human input.

On 2/4/2024 at 6:15 PM, Ekaterina said:

Some people have good ideas and imagination but need help with visualising it, for example they are good with textual imagination but not visual, or even have a good visual imagination but suck at actually drawing/painting.

I believe that in the best artworks all aspects of it, from the material 🖌️ (digital, LOL), the colors 🎨, to the style, the composition 👩‍🎨 etc. to finally the content or the idea, fit together as a unified whole.

Obviously, if they fit is very totally subjective.

So for me, to really get what I want, I have to draw it myself. Obviously, I still don't 100 % get what I want, because I'm lacking in skill. But my deficits are the lesser problem than AI having a "mind of its own".

--

Now, the progress in AI image generators for the last 18 months is simply insane. My first attempts were positively ugly, but now I wish I had that technical proficiency.

The amount of drama in the meantime was similarly insane... 🙄 e.g. the Wacom - "dragongate". (the main manufacturer for graphics tablets using ... AI art ! 🫣), Wizards of the Coast using AI art, firmly denying it, etc.

I don't intend to make any money from my "artworks" and don't care that much about feedback. AI doesn't take anything from me, and therefore I still try to learn to draw better.

But no matter how chilled I am about this, I feel the hostility. The constant suspicions "Is this AI", the flame wars, the name-calling, etc.

There are also many shady self-promoters in this AI war, who lack the necessary knowledge about the complex legal, technical and ethical issues involved, and promise "the simple solution". Think twice before supporting anyone.

On 2/4/2024 at 11:27 AM, Ekaterina said:

So what Plato was describing is basically aesthetic attraction? If so, it doesn't seem aphobic, because if the point is to understand beauty and beauty of terrestrial objects is considered reflection of the higher world, then even if one is completely indifferent to physical beauty of human beings, one can find beauty just as well in a lot of things that aren't physically attractive people, such as nature and art. 

It includes (modern) aesthetic attraction but goes beyond that, because it also includes the "beauty of the soul".

So ... I agree that "aphobic" is too strong. There should be other ways to appreciate Beauty.

But still, Eros is so important for Plato, since at least it's the most common or obvious way how we get reminded of the realm of the forms, and the process gets kick-started.

This works since Eros is so strong.

But that's also why I find it odd that Plato reduces Eros to seeking Beauty (even if his conception is broader). Why should the "ugly, shaggy dark horse" of the soul-chariot (which symbolizes the appetites and lust) be so susceptible to Beauty?

From my modern view, it is not. And Eros is strong, because sexual (and romantic) attraction is usually strong, but not aesthetic. While sexual/romantic attraction sure correlates with aesthetic attraction, it's e.g. not that rare to get sexually attracted to people who are not considered beautiful.

I mean persons (ok, usually women) called "skanky" or "trashy". Apparently and for whatever reason, it's bad to be sexually attractive when you aren't beautiful. 🙄

On 2/4/2024 at 11:27 AM, Ekaterina said:

And, well, other kinds of interpersonal relationships aren't beauty-driven, like friendship, family or respect. These would mean that the person perceives in another person a reflection of another idea other than beauty? The point of Plato's philosophy is that all abstract ideas objectively exist and manifest in our world - that means there's an endless number of ideas to be attracted to. 

This is tricky, since Plato's conception of Beauty is so broad, and he regards Beauty (and Truth) as expressions of the Good (which is certainly not something we believe nowadays).

The question is if those other relationships are strong enough for us to trigger that process of remembrance.

He calls Eros a divine madness* after all.

* Therefore, I find it forgivable if aros use that word madness when talking about romance. Yes, yes, it should certainly be avoided because of the saneism. But allos call it that way, including the founder of Western philosophy, so it's to be expected that some aros just say "Love is madness? Oh, I agree."

BTW, in Phaedrus the speech of Lysias sounds like some very romance-negative disgruntled aro wrote it.

Originally, I thought that gender at least had some vague relation to femininity and masculinity*.

Then xeninity came a long and at this point, I just give up.

I don't understand "gender" and opt out of it.

* But what even is femininity and masculinity? A set of attributes, behaviors, and roles? In that case, they are Mandelbrot-like complex, with exceptions and exceptions to exceptions. E.g. The Warrior is the archetype of masculinity: the male symbol ♂ represents the shield and spear of Mars. But ok, there are female warriors, what to do with them? We expect them to wield elegant "feminine" weapons like rapiers or naginatas. Not a war hammer! So you can at least be feminine in your unfemininity. Amazing.

On 1/18/2024 at 10:47 PM, saucewisdom said:

But the stranger part is that I have no desire to change it because I'm already so used to it. So, I only use they in my pronouns but I'm largely unbothered by presenting as my assigned gender anyway because I've been doing it for such a long time.

I would say it's more than not caring, since I prefer to not be regarded as having a gender.

I have a rather androgynous appearance, but tend to be more likely identified as male. But this comes naturally. I don't have any desire to do any drastic steps; in this sense, I don't care enough.

Regarding gendered products, I can use any. Still, I find those giant megacorporations aggressively pushing gender into my face really annoying and "boycott" them. 🙃

Why is CK One the exception, not the rule? It's so old-school, but "One for all" really resonates with me.

It depends on the overtone.

For french kissing, I don't get much out of this sensory experience. I do it, because it's expected. Overall, I don't understand why people value it so much.

On 1/20/2024 at 10:52 PM, Holmbo said:

A follow up question: anyone who's aroallo and don't enjoy that kissing? Because I associate it with sex rather than romance but I'm curious if some find it romantic.

I partly associate it with romance, since open-mouth kissing is done for its own sake.

In my teens, there were all those student couples that smooched around at 7:30 A.M., 1 meter outside the schoolyard (it was banned on school grounds). I just found that weird.

Over time, I associated open mouth kissing more with sex, and softened my attitude towards it.

On 1/24/2024 at 1:26 AM, DaviM703 said:

I was having an involuntary physical response because we were cuddling naked for the skin-to-skin contact.

There is obviously nothing wrong to regard this as just something sensual. But you can be 100 % sure that people outside the aro-ace community won't understand. Cuddling naked will be categorized as something very sexual or even as foreplay.

On 1/24/2024 at 1:26 AM, DaviM703 said:

The biggest lasting effect now is that my best friend of 4 years, who I talked to in the few hours after everything happened, hasn't talked to me in the over 3 months since after I expressed violent thoughts that I never would have acted on but that were an expression of how upset I was and how powerless I felt when all this had just happened, and I am genuinely becoming afraid she will never talk to me again.

I'm very sorry this happened. It's very risky to talk about mental health problems, especially violent thoughts. Many people don't understand it and come to the wrong conclusions if they don't have experience with it.

For example, most laymen can't differentiate between Harm-OCD (characterized by having intrusive fears that one may do violence to someone), which is harmless (because it is caused by pathological doubts, without any real urges), and dangerous homicidal ideation caused by psychosis, which may be acted upon.

So one really should be very careful here. Also, many people struggle to keep secrets and suddenly people know about your problems who shouldn't. I absolutely hate this character flaw, but it is pretty common. A therapist OTOH, even if they don't have so high moral standards, will maintain confidentiality just to keep their job.

Sorry that I can't give you any more positive advice. I probably didn't tell you anything new. 😔

On 1/25/2024 at 2:30 PM, Nix said:

Well I played Sable anyway, because it was the 'free' game om PS Plus Essential in December :)

Oh no, I missed it. 🙁 I always forget to check it since I only subscribed to PS Plus Essential for Online Gaming.

On 1/25/2024 at 2:30 PM, Nix said:

Also, speaking of unplayable, I finally finished Jedi: Survivor yesterday ✨

🏅

Didn't this come out ... 9 months ago? Have they finally fixed all the bugs? 😄

So many different games and all the same issue: they were released in an obviously unfinished state.

We really shouldn't accept this! Let's not preorder anything or convince ourselves that when we read about "tech issues" it won't be that bad! OK, on February 29th, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will come out ... <preorder> 🏃‍♀️

On 1/25/2024 at 2:30 PM, Nix said:

I got a little uneasy with the corny romance but there is thankfully not too much of that.

It would be very aro to get the romance to glitch.

Now playing Lords of the Fallen again. Back in November, I soon put it down soon, because of the abysmal performance. Not that the performance is good now, it is merely fixed to the point that it's playable.

It uses Unreal Engine 5, which excludes many people with less powerful hardware. I guess, to really have fun with it, you need an RTX 5090 ... oops, that's not available yet. 🙃 Not much exaggeration! The PS5 also has serious problems to handle this engine. All this for marginal improvements in the graphics.

So the game itself, I otherwise really like it. The mechanics with Umbral (the realm of the dead, that runs parallel to the normal world Axiom) is really cool. You can get killed, and it's not over yet, you end up in Umbral, which is more hostile. Only if you get killed again there, you respawn.

The NPC dialogues and quest lines are wonderful. The world is really vast and immersive. Also, the way the background story is handled, by the umbral stigmas that allow one to relive past traumatic events, is great.

The difficulty is considerably easier than Lies of P, but I'm glad it is, because you fight against the jank and frame drops.

It's kind of heart-breaking because they obviously had a grand vision for this game. It's epic in size, and you can see the enormous work that was put into it. But it is so dragged down by the poor performance and general clunkiness.

Lies of P was smaller and used Unreal Engine 4. It has great performance, is challenging for the right reasons and super-polished, and because of that the much, much better game than LOTF.

On 1/19/2024 at 9:29 PM, Helion said:

Not to be a bummer, but it's a reaaaally small step.

From a Western perspective, it is a very small step. But from a world-perspective, it is big. The turmoil that Fiducia Supplicans caused, e.g. in Africa proves this. Many bishops there reject it (one has to remember that in some of those countries, homosexuality is illegal, so they obviously have a "reasonable excuse").

On 1/19/2024 at 9:29 PM, Helion said:

but doesn't approve of you being lgbtq+

In theory, the traditional Natural Law is still the orthodox doctrine, and its principles remain unchanged since the 13th century: any sex except vanilla hetero is unnatural ⇒ sinful.

The reality is very different, of course, since in many Catholic parts of the world nobody believes that anymore, including the clergy. E.g. in Belgium they even have a liturgy for same-gender couples. So they genuinely* approve you being LGBTQ+ in those countries.

I guess Fiducia Supplicans was an attempt to reconcile those very different standpoints. Otherwise, many dioceses (Belgian, German, etc.) would be in an obvious state of "heresy".

* not in the "love the sinner, hate the sin" manner

Emotions don't work logical. Normally, I'm just as said as if some random stranger died. Which means I'm not sad. I just can't be sad about every death that occurs in the world.

But there are sometimes special broadcasts when a celebrity died, and they perhaps were genuinely decent persons but had a life full of tragedies, and now they even died. E.g. Sinead O'Connor. So that can make me sad.

There's another, more selfish way that celebrity deaths can make me sad. They just trigger the sobering realization that change is unavoidable. But I guess I want to live in a continuous present. 😃 So if it was a really important celebrity, I feel sad because of this. I mean those institutions, like David Bowie, that even your grandma knows.

My sister loves those games. She intensively played Sims and clocked 1000 hours in Animal Crossing.

And she really, really likes the romance in Harvest Moon. She told me so much about her achievements to get the hardest marriages in Harvest Moon. 🥱😴 😬

I tried to get into it but don't understand the fascination ... 😅

4 hours ago, Nix said:

I played sims when I was a kid at my friends house, but I was only interested in designing an outrageously big house (infinite money cheat of course) while she was all about torturing the poor sims 😅

Oh yes, that cheat. I vaguely remember some absurdly huge Tiki-like house my sister built. 😀

4 hours ago, Nix said:

During the lockdown I played way to much Animal Crossing on Switch; I eventually sold it out of a sense of self preservation 😬

👍IMHO, some games really overdo it with the compulsion loop.

14 hours ago, dewy said:

Personally I like cats as the aro animal, but I'm biased as a cat owner who's had cats my entire life.

I love cats, too. I've rarely seen house cats used as aro pride animal, though. More felines in the broad sense because the tiger is well-established.

Source: Queerappear

PS: why does this tiger not need a space helmet? 😄

19 hours ago, Ankipan_ said:

It's unfair for him, an amazing person, to date me, someone who can't reciprocate the love he deserves.

I don't think he's so amazing and instead extremely controlling, possessive and unhinged.

20 hours ago, Ankipan_ said:

Quite recently, I've made a new friend whom I talk to him about a lot, which he responded to "she's cheating... I kill." I imagine it's jokingly but I've had frequent violent nightmares since he's said that.

I would interpret this as a thinly veiled threat.

20 hours ago, Ankipan_ said:

(TW mentions of death) recently I've found myself praying I have a premature death

😢 You should take this seriously because active suicidal ideation can develop from it, which is dangerous.

19 hours ago, Ankipan_ said:

One more additional thing, my friends don't understand aromanticism (I've tried educating them about it although they don't know I'm aro) and they've made fun of it before. They said I'd be insane if I broke up with him, and that I'll change my mind eventually and would want to have his children and marry him frequently. (Which is why I'm here, I want an unbiased opinion from someone who understands aro-ace)

You being aro is the least of the problems here.

It would be one thing if you were 20 years old, harmoniously together since 2 years, and both be totally on board with marrying and having children. One could still make a case it would be ill-advised ... but why not. Instead, you're a minor and together since 4 months - there's nothing remotely reasonable about his plans.

Oh, and then are all the other problems...

Obviously, there's no way to salvage this. And your friends suck, since they totally buy into all his nonsense instead of supporting you.

You should safely dump him remotely and then strictly avoid him. Don't even break up with him face-to-face - as psychologically unstable as he is, this is potentially dangerous.