aroace characters are valuable. they aren’t boring. they are important queer rep. their stories are important. they are groundbreaking. they aren’t any less than other queer characters. they don’t deserve to be erased.
no but like people will say two characters are romantically and/or sexually interested in each other…do you not have friends? like there are actually platonic explanations for this. they are friends.
no but is it really that hard to make a character dislike romance. like is it that hard to make a character who does not date. is it that fucking hard to make an aro character !?!?!!
I think everyone could learn a thing or two from the aromantic community. What we want isn’t the same as what everyone else wants, so we’re forced to think about how exactly we want to live. We’re forced to think about the structure of our social lives, and how that structure affects us. While most people just assume that love (especially romantic love) is what everyone wants in life, including themselves, and never question why, we are forced to get rid of any preconceptions about what we want and rebuild our expectations entirely. I think that sort of introspection would benefit everyone, aromantic or not.
there’s literally no universal human experience. and i’m not just talking about love but like literally everything. even if 99.8% of the population has a common experience that’s still 7.8 million that don’t. there’s no universal experience
i disagree because there are a few but they’re so mundane they barely count. like, we all have a heartbeat. we all breathe, we all eat in whatever form that may take, we all release waste from our bodies. we all were born, we all will die, that’s universal. emotions, even for the catatonic, do exist, and it’s impossible to say someone has never felt happiness or contented or sad.
okay this is a good point. i guess i should have been more specific - i’m talking experiences, not necessarily basic bodily functions. this was a post more directed towards being loveless - love isn’t a human experience and sometimes people forget to realize that. thanks for the add on /pos
there’s literally no universal human experience. and i’m not just talking about love but like literally everything. even if 99.8% of the population has a common experience that’s still 7.8 million that don’t. there’s no universal experience
don’t get me wrong i love seeing aroace rep bc im also aroace but i wish there was a character that was just aromantic without the ace.a non-sam aro or alloaro.bc a lot of aroace characters their asexuality overshadows their aromanticism SO much and it’s like creators are scared to make a character that’s strictly aro meanwhile there’s no problem making characters be ace and not aro
(don’t apologize for derailing you make a great point!)
amatonormativity is far.far far FAR too common,even in queer spaces.every other day i see a post on my dash that’s like “love is the meaning of everything actually and if you don’t like love you’re bad”
and i think amatonormativity plays a big part to how alloaros specifically are treated because you can be sexually attracted to somone only if you’re in love them too,otherwise you’re predatory and a player and a horrible person(don’t even get me STARTED on how hetero aro men get treated) alloaros get alienated and treated like horrible people simply for their sexuality because sexual attraction is seen as predatory and bad while romantic love is seen as pure and good
people can literally not comprehend not being in love with anyone,and while aroace rep is great and aroace ppl are valid and deserve the representation i think the reason the only aromantic character rep is when they’re also asexual;is to make their asexuality “compensate” for their aromanticism,because aromanticism itself is a bad weird sexuality that challenges the norm
this too! often when a character gets confirmed as aroace i see a lot of people saying “ace rep! ace rep!”. while yes it is ace rep, it’s not just ace rep, and those comments just come off as erasing aromanticism
i also get this in real life- there’s been multiple times where i come out to someone as aroace and then they proceed to refer to me as only “asexual” (which is especially annoying because i tend to prioritize my aro identity over my ace identity)
anyways, to bring it back to the original point of this post, there absolutely needs to be more non-ace aro rep. aromanticism is so under-repesented, and what little “mainstream” representation we do have all being aroace makes aromanticism seem like an “add-on” to asexuality
It’s not even just the lack of alloaro rep, it’s that anything that looks remotely like alloaro rep is portrayed as inherently bad and something for the character to grow out of, especially after meeting “the right person” ()
shout out to aroace spectrum people in general but i wanna say also: shout out to aroace spectrum people who are currently exploring romantic and/or sexual relationships.
if you’re going to support aspecs you have to support aspecs who want/have sexual/romantic relationships but also aspecs who are romance/sex-repulsed. you have to support loveless/lovequeer aspecs but also aspecs who love love. you cannot support the group that fits your amatonormative standards the best.
