dewy

I love writing romance, even though I may not understand it fully. I write fanfiction and love shipping so luckily the characters already have chemistry I can work with. But now that I think about it, I tend to focus on the non romantic aspects of their relationship, or write the story in a way that it could be either platonic or romantic. I remember writing for a ship exchange event and worrying I hadn't made it romantic enough, but luckily my recipient loved it. But I don't really write fluff a lot, usually angst, smut, or stories where the romantic relationship is there but not the main focus.

It's normal to have doubts. For me I had them even after a while of knowing I was aro because people I knew would say bad things about aromanticism. Having doubts doesn't make you any less aromantic. And even if your identity does end up changing later on, that's completely OK. I know my identity has changed a lot since realizing I'm aro, from sexuality, to different aro sublabels, even to thinking I wasn't aro at all for a short time. The doubts will lessen over time. My advice is to try not to torture yourself thinking about it so much, and surround yourself with supportive people.

Acht from Splatoon canonically uses they/them pronouns. It's cool because they were a minor character before and haven't been referred to until the recent Splatoon DLC. I didn't expect it since they look a bit more fem and we haven't had a canonically nonbinary character in Splatoon before, so it's cool to see some representation.

My newest aro headcanon is Acht from Splatoon. The fandom currently has lots of jokes about Pearl and Marina being all lovey dovey and affectionate and Acht just being so done, and I love it, because same. Also they make a pretty good color picked aromantic flag.

Yes, I've always loved romance in fiction and shipping and that didn't change when I found out I was aro. It's not weird, there's a variety of aros and while some of us might not like romantic fiction, some of us really love it, just maybe not in real life.

Seconding this, came here to say this exact thing. Or maybe something like "sorry, but I'm not interested..." anything like that, keeping it polite but vague works without having to tell people you're aromantic. If this happens, most people won't press you for any more reason, but if they do, it would be quite rude and you don't have to share that you're aromantic or anything you don't want to.

I've always loved shipping and that didn't change when I figured out I was aromantic. There's lots of reasons I might like a ship, I might find them hot together, think their dynamic is interesting, or like Ekaterina said find other non romantic aspects of their relationship interesting. I've been really into this one ship that checks all those boxes for about a year and a half now.

Has anyone mentioned Luv Luv Luv by Pansy Division? It feels like such an aroallo anthem. Love love love love love, and it sounds like blah blah blah blah blah.

I've seen people saying we can't have healthy relationships, super hurtful.

Hehe yes, I've loved reading and writing fanfiction for years, all different kinds. I love writing one shots. My main fandom is FE3H but I also sometimes like fics for other stuff, like Chainsaw Man, Ace Attorney, and Splatoon. I've always been really into shipping, so a lot of the fanfiction I read and write is to explore relationships that may not have been canon. I also like reading and writing about trans characters, since we sadly don't have enough representation, and it's fun to make headcanons.

Yes, queer Sherlock Holmes! I see him as both aro and gay since I love both of those interpretations, so why not both? I remember in The Sign of Four when Watson got married he was resentful, classic aro experience of being frustrated seeing friends get partners and romance becoming more important than friendship for them. It's a good thing this didn't turn out to be the case for these two, nothing can separate them!

Yeah, I've always loved the sims ever since I was a kid. Always loved making families, having my sims have kids and see how the kids would turn out. It's a lot of fun and a good way to live out my "fantasy" of having kids even though it wouldn't be practical for me. Especially with the amount of kids my sims sometimes have, one time my sims had 6 because they had twins and triplets! Now I still play every now and then but it's been a while, I should start up a new game sometime. For other life sim games, I grew up with Animal Crossing and loved making friends with the villagers as well as decorating my house, going fishing, and more. I think that's a good game for aros now that I think about it, completely romance free. I've also tried Stardew Valley before because a lot of people I know really like it. I never got too far but it's interesting seeing the characters my friends romance, they always seem really attached to one in particular. Meanwhile I just liked mining.

Oh, I didn't know about the tiger, how cute. I think tigers are an awesome aro animal. Thanks for sharing!

I'm gray aro, and personally it just takes time for me to figure it out. Sometimes I get crushes on people then it fades and I realize it was just something like admiration or infatuation. So whether the attraction actually lasts is how I determine if it's genuine, if that makes sense.

I mean, yes, there are a lot of aromantic sublabels and terms, but not everyone knows or understands them all. Personally I don't find most sublabels helpful and even have a hard time understanding them, as I'm not super active in the aromantic community online these days. And like I said, I don't understand what queerplatonic relationship is, and I don't think I want to count the relationship I have with my partner as an "alternative relationship" since we've been dating for a while now and I don't see why the label matters so much? Especially seeing as we're both queer in other ways than me being aromantic, so our relationship would not be considered "normal" dating even if I were alloromantic. I'm not trying to make up rules, and I don't think anyone here is. Yes, aromantic people can date, but obviously not all of us want to, and that's ok. If I were making up rules, I would be saying something like all aromantic people should try out dating to see if they like it, which is...not something I believe in at all. I really think it's up to the individual.