been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week

screaming crying on my knees begging for aro media. ace and aroace media is already in such a limited amount in this world, and we need much more of these two, but just aro media is even less in amount, it's practically non existent. and i know i could find some aro media, i know there's something about everything in this world, but god, i wish i didn't have to scour the depths of the internet for it. i wish such media was common. i wish it was something many people had heard about. i wish there were shows with aro protagonists trending on tumblr for weeks, i wish it was something that everyone posted about, i wish there were gifsets and screencaps and analyses. i wish there were movies with aro protagonists about which people wrote twenty paragraph thinkpieces that got 27k notes. i wish aromanticism was so common in media that media about it got popular, that it became profitable, that we became sick of it. i just wish aromanticism was something that was acknowledged more.

Do you know of any books / other media w allosexual demiromantic characters that dont end up in qprs or stated to be nonsexual romance, and don't emphasize friendships? (bc Im very repulsed by those things - I do understand its very unlikely to find media with no friendship - something i struggle w a lot as a plato repulsed aplatonic)

Ugh I've been trying to think of / find answers for this and frustratingly I've come up short!! The only allosexual demiromantic rep I can think of is Fire Becomes Her but that is very much about friendship & QPRs so I wouldn't recommend it in this case.

Going to throw this out to my followers and the aro crowd, hopefully they'll know of some more options??

Maybe @aro-who-reads might have something too that I missed?

hello where are the discomfited aspec good omens s2 readings please

Oh my fuck

can somebody PLEASE PLEASE give me some queer media (preferably aro or enby fantasy) to consume because I am DYING HERE

IT'S PRIDE MONTH ASSHOLES YOU CAN'T DO ME LIKE THIS THIS IS APHOBIC

*sharp inhale*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

I know it's kinda selfish, but can I have more asexual charactes that aren't aromantic? One who stands up and says that you can love without sex, and that they deserve love without having to engaging in something they prefer not to?

Also a aromantic character that isn't asexual? One who doesn't feel guilt about needing and wanting people, but not seeking a romantic relationship with them? One that is open and proud, and in no way ashamed for their lack of love and need of sex?

Please?

Edit: I realize some aroace people got frustrated at this post due to having next to no representation already, and I admit it was blind of me to phrase it how I did.

I was (unfairly) annoyed when I made this post because I kept seeing people write ace characters I really like to be aro as well. (Which is more then fine to do btw!)

This tumblr dwelling feline was a salty bean who didn't think anyone would see this.

Thank you to everyone who gave recommendations in the comments!

And please don't start arguments.

All this aroace character shipcourse has proven to me that a majority of people that interact in fandom cannot actually interact with characters and media outside of shipping and genuinely I believe you need to learn how to interact with media outside of shipping.

i’d like to read about non-white aro experiences (as well as experiences of aro people from outside the US and UK). i don’t think there are enough explicitly non-white conversations about aromanticism. i remember seeing a demographic poll a long time ago, with a majority of aromantic tumblr identifying as white, but non-white aros exist!

i want to hear from people who can’t/won’t come out because of cultural expectations or language barriers. people who use different words to describe their aromanticism. people who experience isolation from the aro community because they aren’t white (enough). i want to hear about aromanticism from new angles!

of course, no one is ever obligated to reveal their ethnicity or race online. but if anyone has seen writing on diverse aro experiences or if they want to share their own experiences, i’d like to read about other perspectives! (pls send stuff my way)

society if we got more wlw, ace and aro representation in media:

i think the line that made me really care about lup and barry's relationship was "you are my heart".

a line said by lup, not to barry, her lover. but to taako, her brother.

so often in media, there's the idea that a romantic partner is supposed to be your be-all end-all relationship. that ever putting family or friends above a long-term romantic partner is inherently childish and unhealthy.

a character will get into a romantic relationship and their other relationships will be thrown by the wayside and that's treated like the right way to live.

and that's a miserable message in general, but especially awful to me as an aroace.

but as lup reassures taako that she could never replace him, griffin reassures the audience that he's not going to throw away his story's platonic relationships for the sake of romance

and that also ties into one of the main defining quotes of the stolen century: "our capacity for love increases with each person we cross paths with throughout our lives, and with each moment we spend with those people."

the romantic relationship isn't there to steal love away from the platonic relationships, it's just there to be more love.

sorry we gave your boyfriend a copy of Relationship Anarchy by Juan Carlos Pérez Cortés. yeah he's deconstructing amatonormativity and reconsidering the hierarchical nature of your relationship. yeah he's not breaking up with you but he Has been radicalized. sorry

This is something of a sequel to my original essay on being loveless.

It's also a discussion of the ways love is wielded against allo-aros, the a-spec community's ongoing conflation of love and attraction, and the impact allosexual aromanticism has on my lovelessness.

Because too often, unfortunately, I see loveless aromantic identity communicated and celebrated so as to exclude me, and other allosexual aros, from it.

I hope that's something we can begin to change this Aro Week.

There's a post making the circles about fanfiction that really reaaaaally rubs me the wrong way. It's essentially arguing that fanfiction is a small subculture of the internet and shipping is a small niche subset of that, and it's on you if you walk into fandom spaces and complain about shipping which lol.

Like the first point, sure, but to call shipping a niche in fandom spaces is ridiculous. Gen is the niche in fandom. It is difficult to downright impossible to exist in fandom places without engaging (even unwillingly) with shipping, and it's questionable at best to claim the only reason that people might have problems with this is homophobia.

Like, don't frame this as if it's so easy to engage in fandom and avoid shipping, and then imply there's no reason people would want to engage in fandom besides shipping. Just tell me you don't care about aro people and go.

where are all my people (closeted aroace girls whose parents think they are a lesbian bc they lack interest in men)?

Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable now that Tumblr's notifications call the people I follow my crush? Like, no? Sir, I'm asexual and this is Tumblr. This space and its users are the Internet equivalent of a racoon rummaging through the trash at night. If I wanted to stalk my nonexistent crush, I'd use Instagram.

Y'all ever think about how children's media is the only media to really put priority to friendship (ex: the power of friendship) and how once you grow up media starts to shift towards a focus on romantic love and sexual relationships and how that kind of puts out this idea that valuing friendship is a childish thing you need to grow out of and replace with romance and sex cause I do.