Picklethewickle

Do you have a "friend" you can point to as your source of information? A website that has lots of LGBTQIA+ traffic in addition to other stuff your parents wouldn't consider odd? (Take Pinterest as an example. It has everything in the most random grab-bag. You can be looking at kitten pictures and get queer posts.) Can you say you heard something at work or at school? If you have these excuses for being aware of these issues, then you can open with "I heard from..." and then fill in the appropriate information to combat the stereotypes they believe, without actually saying this information comes from your own perspective. That can give you an opportunity to test the waters and see how they react.

If they reflect honestly on the things you tell them and take the time to consider how the stereotypes they believe might be wrong, then they may just be incorrect rather than unsupportive. The thing to watch out for is if they become argumentive or dismissive whenever you tell them something new or different from what they believe.

11 hours ago, allhailtheglowcloud said:

Are the dances similar enough to be mistaken for each other? Because if so, were the creators conspiring with each other? If that's true, I think that's very fun.

I see someone is trying to garner information on the secret dances. Very sneaky. Revealing the secret dances gets you automatically kicked out of the Aromantics clubs, so I can't help you. Sorry. (The rule still holds even if you are already kicked out. They can kick you out more than once, you know.) What I will say is that certain conspiracy theories are based on truth. Is this one of them? Is this the reason why people confuse aromanticism and asexuality? I've said too much already.

8 hours ago, Neon said:

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH I have done it. Join me in (for me, self imposed lmao) exclusion!!!

We'll form an evil team and get everyone kicked out. We'll make up new gold-star rules and change them all the time so that everyone is scrambling to figure out if they fit into the club or not. We'll turn everyone against each other in a competition over rank.

New rules, subject to change:

Must love frogs.

Must not love love frogs. No looking for your enchanted prince in the frog pond.

Must wear green every day.

Must do the secret aromantic dance for each day you wear the wrong shade of green. (Only true aromantics know the secret aromantic dance. If you don't know the dance, you aren't aromantic.)

Must not mistakenly do the secret asexual dance, even if you are also asexual. (Disclaimer: If you are asexual or aroace, and fail to do the secret asexual dance for every day you forget to wear purple, you are no longer asexual.)

5 hours ago, Fox said:

I've read it! I liked it a lot, you get little snippets of old history from the world, and conversations through letters between the main characters, which were fun. And the pictures were fantastic!

I'm looking forward to reading it even more, then. I'll get to it soon, hopefully.

Has anyone read A Guide to the Dragon World? I haven't read it yet, but I will. I've flipped through it, and it has a great many nice pictures. It also has a song praising sky wings, complete with sheet music. I guess that's great if sky wings are your favourite.

12 hours ago, Neon said:

• Must have or want a QPR
• Cannot have or a QPR with multiple people at the same time
• Must have never been asked out
• Must be the go-to person in your friend group for romantic advice
• Must hate all romance in media
• Must not have ever done anything that can be interpreted as romantic

Welp, I've been kicked out. I have never had and have never wanted a qpr.

I will get my revenge. I will start interpreting the most random nonsense as romantic in other people, and get you all kicked out.

4 hours ago, Neon said:

You can have a sliver star

People missing 2 get a green star

People missing 3 get a blue star

People missing 4 get a red star

Everyone else just gets a smiley face drawn on the paper.

Yay! Thank you for my silver star. I will wear it with pride. I'm loving the ranking system.

9 hours ago, Neon said:

• Must not feel any kind of romantic attraction
• Cannot have dated anyone in the past, or even wanted to date someone
• Cannot have even thought they had a crush
• Cannot be aplatonic, afamiliar, loveless, or similar
• Must be romance repulsed
• Must not have sex, even if they aren't asexual

Dammit, I almost won that gold star. I'm aplatonic. Can I get me a slightly tarnished gold star sticker? A sticker with a couple of the points a little bit crumpled?

It sounds cool. It's easy to say. I like how it defines ones own experiences without implying that we have to measure against each other.

1. Excuse me, I hit skip twice. It's not my fault you didn't give the right options. I did it again, and didn't choose so much skip.
Aromantic coded villain: Queer-coded villain pride is about reclaiming the idea that queer people are inherently evil and bad people by embracing the idea of being a villain. Aromantic villains are amazing, I love you guys!

I do like the idea of pushing back against the attitudes that being queer is a bad thing.

2. Aromantic Villain </3
Wow we've got to show that THIS GUY is EVIL AS HECK, and we can do it by showing that they don't feel love! Good thing that there aren't any people in the audience who might hate that! everybody wants lovvvveeeeeee (no they don't)

I've got to say, I love this summary. Screw you, 'phobes, take that kind of loving.

3. Swords
Keywords : intelligence, logic, ambition, conflict, communication, balance. You are really involved in the fight for your rights. You probably have an aro activism account on social media because you have a strong sense of justice and want to be heard. You hate amatonormativity and want it to stop hurting you and your community.

I don't feel like a aromantic-rights warrior. I haven't even written an aro story, even though I've been meaning too.

4. Arospec
You may be a bit on the darker side, maybe into dark academia, cryptids, or mossy forests. Maybe you prefer to have your nose in a book or doing your own crafts (Your "correct" answer from the song question: https://open.spotify.com/track/1yYnsciETqJyZit30x7agr?si=c38c6751a89245cc)

Sure. I like trees and books and crafts. (I don't know any of the songs from the list, and I wasn't going to bother looking them up. I made my selection by shutting my eyes and poking my mousepad at random. I didn't bother checking out what the "correct" song was supposed to be.)

5. Noon Aromantic

How, how, how, did I get noon? Bright? Energetic? Lively? Glass half full? Outspoken? Extroverted? Vibrant? Loyal? Friends? I am none of those things. This quiz is backwards, I specifically clicked on the options pessimistic and introverted and quiet. The world needs to shut up.

If you're making fanart, please do as much non-ship fanart as you wish. It's impossible to find that kind of content.

For the main of it, I'm sorry you're experiencing shame about being aro. It's hard to function in times and places that put so much emphasis on romance and relationships, and the assumption that everyone wants those things. I hope it gets better for you.

You can tell them you don't like it. You can tell them it's violating your boundaries. You can tell them you aren't willing to stick around for that kind of thing. If all else fails, you can punch them in the face.

16 hours ago, P4R4D0X said:

Name suggestions anyone?

Name them something that symbolizes their primary emotions or thoughts. Concepts are fun because they can be genderless, or can have gender connotations. Giving someone who has a masc appearance a feminine name can create a mixed sense of gender, and a name with no gender connotations can defy the sense of gender-binary.

The revulsion I feel toward any form of romance makes it hard to me to not notice that I'm aromantic.

Moon! She is definitely my favourite, and Blue is probably my second favourite. There really isn't anyone I dislike. Probably my favourite small sub-plot was Winter trying to keep a pet human.

Dicke Titten by Rammstein

10 hours ago, Nix said:

I guess this version has some extra options and/or content then?

8 hours ago, Sili said:

From my understanding thats exactly what it is. If you enjoyed the original you would likely enjoy DX, as its the same game with extra stuff, better graphics etc.

The plotline has been the same so far as I've gotten, but a lot of things are made easier. Your teammates can no longer hit you with their moves, and can shoot through you if they have ranged attacks. You can change who is the team lead (who you are playing) at any point, not just in certain dungeons, and not just after you finish the main story. You can rescue yourself if your team faints. Ranking up gives you all kinds of rewards, including an increase in the number of jobs you can take at once, which means you can do a dozen jobs in one dungeon and rank up even faster. Pokemon now have additional rare abilities that help your whole team. You don't have to find special HMs before you can access certain dungeons.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX. I don't know what the DX stands for, but it's a re-release of Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team, basically.

I'm having a nice pot of tea.

Both of these names are cool, but why not STR4NG3P30PL3 so you can be multiple entities at once?

For writing fanfiction, I've tried some shipping in the past to see what it is all about, and discovered I don't have an interest in writing romance. However, I have written about characters who are canonically in a relationship, and I've felt like I had to include that aspect of their lives in my stories. Trying to write a romantic scene, or even just a few sentences, is a struggle. Eventually I figured out a way to sidestep the situation. I write them behaving in a familiar sort of way, and the reader's bias goes ahead and interprets it as romantic for me. While I don't enjoy fandoms drive to interpret every interaction as romantic, it can make it easier to get throught writing the boring bits.

The Mummy (1999)

13 hours ago, organs and bone said:

oh sure! if you want you can credit my toyhouse (https://toyhou.se/organs-and-bone) but you don’t have to!

Thank you! I included your user name as the artist, and I added the link you gave me.

58 minutes ago, organs and bone said:

some quick aro awareness art! feel free to use!!

Can I stick this on Pinterest?

Being put into that position would make me feel sick too. Honestly, it would end the friendship. People need to accept that sometimes you like someone as a friend, and that doesn't have to change into anything else.