honestly my advice for people questioning if they're aro is kind of the same as my advice for people questioning if they're trans which is do less worrying about whether or not you inherently fall into this arbitrary category and do more considering what you want in and from your life. like ultimately deconstructing societal ideals of what relationships (or gender) should be like and figuring out what you want them to look like in your life is what matters and whether or not you experience romantic attraction is kind of immaterial
Imagine showing up to work one day and people are like "jesus fucking christ there's a corpse in here", herd you to the back room and everyone who sees you also agrees that there is now a dead body where you are sitting, with the appropriate amount of shock and disgust about it. You figure it's some kind of a prank that they're pulling, but also the people that you know aren't into pranks, or aren't very good actors, are treating you like a corpse. They go weirdly back and forth between talking about you as if you're not there, and politely asking you to stay still while they figure out who you're supposed to call in case of a dead body randomly appearing.
Paramedics show up, study you thoroughly and agree that while they can't see any apparent sign of death, you are, indeed, dead, and ask you to climb aboard the ambulance. You're taken to the temporary corpse storage that hospitals have.
On the way there you ask them whether this kind of shit happens often, and while they won't look at you, the paramedics agree that they've never had a talking corpse before, though they won't question the fact that you're moving on your own.
You're eventually led to a morgue, where you're shown a slab to lay on, and at this point you don't really even question it, you just climb onto the Corpse Shelf and lay down, maybe have a little nap, with no idea what's going to happen next.
Then you wake up to someone walking into the morgue, who has the shit scared out of them when you move, and they're like "dude what the fuck, you're not supposed to be here, this place is for storing dead bodies" and when you're like "aw man sorry I thought I was a dead body" they have no idea whether you're joking and they don't care, you're just chased out of there.
And you just kinda go home and take a shower, show up to work normally the next day and nobody questions it.
And basically that's probably how those ants feel when scientists spray them with the Pheromone That Dead Ants Smell Like, and just hang out at the dead-ant-pile until the smell wears off.
Hannibal (2013) // These Violent Delights, Micah Nemerever // Saltburn (2023) // A Primer for the Small Weird Loves, Richard Siken // Interview with the Vampire (2022)
Yesterday I had a dreamt Tumblr started drawing Perry the Platypus humanized and he became a Tumblr-sexyman even tho he doesn't have a Canon human design yet. Then Disney made it canon and married him with Doofenshmirtz on a theatrical movie. Everyone cried and called it the ship of all time, blueprints, etc etc. And even casual people started cosplaying them. And making weddings themed after them. A floating sans head was there for some reason, whispered "February 1" and I woke up in a cold sweat