Loveless has now been created

@chronicintrovert @aliceoseman

THIS IS GEORGIA WARR'S SONG TELL ME I'M WRONG.

I cant get over the fact that all of the parent in Georgia's family want their kids to all get married and give them grandchildren and only 1/3 of those kids are actually able to want that!

Like, both Georgia and Ellis' parents are like 'yOuLL FinD sOmEOne aNd Be hApPy sOOn' like no mother and father i was not equipped to enjoy hanky-panky OR adult fun time OKAY????

“It was something adults said all the time. “You'll change your mind when you're older. You never know what might happen. You'll feel differently one day.” As if we teenagers knew so little about ourselves that we could wake up one day a completely different person. As if the person we are right now doesn't matter at all.”

- Loveless, Alice Oseman (2020)

listening to universe city in the library while ur besties have their enemies to lovers arc... it's all a part of the georgia warr aroace experience ✨️

happy arospec awareness week! 💚🤍🩶🖤

This LGBT+ society has Loveless vibes 😍😁🫠😲

Georgia is so underrated. Aromanticism and asexuality are covered so well. She's literally the group's therapist friend and she cares about her friends so much. I love her🫶🏻

I’ve just finished re-reading Loveless. This book is so important to me and genuinely makes me feel more like myself than anything (who knew that representation matters) and I just love it so much. So I thought I’d make a note of all the reasons I relate to Georgia:

Thinking uni would be the perfect opportunity to find a partner

Picking a guy to fake having a crush

Feeling left out in a room of people kissing

Looking around a club and not seeing anyone I was attracted to

Thinking I just have high standards

Not knowing what my ‘type’ is

Not being keen on the idea of dating apps

Briefly considering being bi or pan because gender doesn’t seem to matter

Finding out someone likes me and immediately assuming I must like them back

Taking the Kinsey Scale test and getting an X

Hearing the word asexual and feeling like your brain was working overtime trying to connect the dots

Being confused when you find out that people think of having sex with someone just from looking at them

Fearing that everybody is going to leave me

Just wanting to live in a big house with all my friends

amen to that

I BITE THR HAND THAT FEEDS ME 🗣️🗣️

The Rooney- egg costume in all its glory

an avatar i made for the osemanverse discord server i’m in! thank you for asking me, it was really fun to do <3

Sanil knows, knows georgia is somewhere on the aroace train, but it's a canon event. So he cant interfere.

I can't stop thinking about Isaac Henderson in Heartstopper, and the inherent isolation of being an aroace person in a romance story. Because, at the end of the day, that's what Heartstopper is - it's about the romance between Nick and Charlie. Even when the narrative has expanded outwards to focus on other characters, their plotlines are primarily about romance: Elle and Tao, Darcy and Tara… It's true that Isaac has a loving friend group and the show doesn't devalue platonic love in the way that many romance stories do. But nevertheless, as an aroace person, Isaac is at odds with the genre of the story in which he lives. The tropes that shows like this are built around don't work for him.

Something that really hammers this home is how the scene when Isaac and James kiss mirrors Charlie and Nick's first kiss. In both scenes, two boys are sitting on the floor away from the main action of a party, one admits to having a crush, the other nervously wants to know whether it's them, and then they kiss. In his version of that scene with James, Isaac is experiencing a moment that - for another character - could be a beautiful moment in a romantic storyline.

For viewers who weren't aware of Alice Oseman's promise of an aroace storyline for Isaac, his interactions with James in the early episodes of Season 2 could easily have been interpreted as the beginning of a romantic love story. The rest of the main Heartstopper group have certainly been viewing his friendship with James through that lens, as shown by the way they tease him about it. But those plot beats of a romantic story don't work for Isaac. Trying to fit into the romance genre pushes Isaac in a direction that feels wrong for him. He is the one person in his primary friend group who can't make himself at home in a romance story.

I don't mean this as a criticism of the show. There is a lot of value to love stories like Heartstopper and there is a lot of value to having aspec representation in a show like Heartstopper. But I think this is the reason why Isaac's plotline felt particularly heartwrenching for me. Sometimes being aroace does feel like being out of step with the genre of story everyone else around you is living. Sometimes it feels like trying to find a place for yourself in a narrative that wasn't built for you. Sometimes it feels like trying to prove to yourself (and the world) that you can still have moments that feel like swirling leaves.

“If I could spend every night of my life eating snacks and watching something silly in a giant bed with one of my best friends, I'd be happy.”

- Loveless, Alice Oseman (2020)

It's crazy how Alice creates the most diverse but also relatable characters. There are characters of different sexual orientations, different races, genders, mental illnesses, family life and eating disorders. They're all so different??? but there's something that binds them all together. For example, I relate to Tao but I also relate to Georgia and I relate to Tori but I relate to Frances but I relate to Lister but I... They're all different, but there's something so familiar about them and you can see similar traits in each of them in yourself. I feel like a collage or mosaic of my favourite characters. Not just the four of them, but all the characters, like Aled Last, Micheal Holden and Elle Argent. Alice Oseman's characters radiate comfort and warmth.

Her books give the same vibes as curling up in you're cozy messy bed after an exhausting day at school or work, buried under a mountain of blankets when it rains or snows outside. The months between September and February when the sun sets early and you get to wear extra layers of clothes or that oversized black hoodie. Returning to your room filled with artifacts from your childhood, old books you haven't touched in like four years, book reports and DIY science projects from 3rd grade and movie poster filled haven where you could leave the stresses of the real world behind.

All the lights are off, except for those fairy string lights above your bed. You're sipping a hot cup of tea or hot chocolate, rereading your old favourite books you loved as a teen and watching that old favourite film that you've seen so many times that you can remember the plot and all the dialogue to, but you watch it anyway. Listening to that carefilly curated 90s indie rock playlist from 2019 to drown out and forget the world outside. Staying up late, the only light being the screen of your laptop or phone, reading fan fiction on AO3 while you're whole family's asleep. That warmth and authenticity that you don't find much in modern media. The nostalgia. How she accurately portrays what actual teenagers are like, both the pros and cons. Even if you're reading it for the first time, @chronicintrovert books have the feeling of returning home.