#i really don't think i can be w someone in a romantic way until ive dealt with a majority of those issues

[raedas]

hey i was just wondering how you figured out you were aro?? no pressure if you’re uncomfortable sharing of course ! but i’m kind of questioning and i thought maybe hearing other people’s experiences might help. and also i was in a relationship for almost a year so that’s probably somewhat significant and additionally complicating ahaha <333

hey anon!! first and foremost good luck with figuring everything out <33 i know at least for me, questioning can be a long and hard and typically ongoing process, but we'll make it through :] i'm gonna stick the rest of my answer beneath the read more bc im getting the sense im gonna go on for a bit FGDHLKSFAJ

one of the biggest things for me that i think is necessary to preface everything is that i've never really had an "oh" moment like some people talk about. there's never been a moment where i saw a label or a flag and was 100% sure i fit into that box, its more like... years worth of questioning and then the internal meter in my head slowly ticking over. like, when i was figuring out i was queer, i maybe started questioning in like... fifth grade you could say? but it started as more of a "oh im definitely not but like What if" and then gradually began to tick more and more towards "oh i think i might not be cishet" to eventually when i hit the... idk, 80% or 90% certainty mark it was more of a "fuck it, im queer" feeling. there's always going to be that bit of doubt for me, i think, and coming to terms with being aro was very similar for me in that regards

another thing is i was ALSO in a relationship for almost a year, and that's during the time when i was coming to terms with being aro/arospec, which im sure you can imagine was an Experience. i do think being in a relationship was the best thing for me trying to figure out i was aro though, bc i definitely got that sense of Wrongness of trying to think of myself as existing in a romantic relationship. like, when i thought of myself as having a romantic partner, it always felt a bit like i was playing at a part and acting like i had romantic feelings more than i actually did. of course that came with.. a lot of me trying to ignore my own feelings and feeling guilty about it up until i broke up with my now ex (this is like the funniest inside joke ever to us now dw) so that's where i was coming from w/ my experiences

i also began to realize that like, whenever i try to imagine myself in a romantic relationship, its always in some ambiguous future like 10 or so years down the line, which completely distances myself from the idea. i have no idea what a romantic relationship with someone would look like for me, it was just this idea of "yeah, someday in an ambiguous future ill have a romantic relationship with someone and we'll cook together and hug each other and have fun" until i realized that i don't actually want a romantic relationship, and also that... none of those things that i actually envisioned are exclusive to a romantic relationship. in my life ive had a grand total of 2 crushes, both of which were/are queerplatonic but also like... if i imagine having an Actual relationship its just stressful to me and not even really appealing, despite the fact that i have a crush on them.

one of the most important things im coming to terms is that its okay if im wrong, its okay if however many years down the line i find out that im actually entirely allo and fall in love with someone. like i said i dont know if ill ever be 100% confident in my own labels especially with the whole issue of "how do you prove a negative". for now, though, calling myself aro is something that makes me happy and feels, most of the time, accurate. another really important thing i think is that aromanticism is entirely a spectrum. you could be aromantic or arospec in a billion different ways*, or you could be none of them, and thats okay too <333 good luck with everything anon i hope hearing about my experiences helped a bit :]

#*honestly none of the arospec labels are Personally helpful to me because again. ive never really had that Oh moment where everything clicke #and i think thats what microlabels are kind of for #essentially if i wanted to identify as any of them it would take hours of examination and proving and disproving etc etc. its easier for me #personally just to call myself aro as a catchall. does that mean im fully aro? does that mean im just arospec in some vague way? im not #entirely sure yet myself. and thats okay too <33 #wishing you the best once again anon feel free to update me or send me an ask whenever!!!! #asks #anon #aromantic #<- why not. for pride month #ok to rb

[eldritchmochi]

Word prompt for the letters! SWORD TIME

mina pls that is so many letters lmao

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

okay, if it is not obvious, i have thought SO MUCH about disability in exandria, so heres a general worldbuilding headcannon vs character based hc but it's shown that disability isn't overly impactful in exandria. basically everything we've seen ranging from pcs like shakaste to big npcs like dancer and also smaller one off pcs like the moorbounder dealer in the city of beasts, whatever the name is, they're fully functional within society despite major physical disabilities and theres functionally not a whole lot of ableism at a surface level when it comes to worldbuilding (thanks matt).

however..... its not hard (for me) to extrapolate how the dynasty in particular would have a not great view on disability (thank u cherry for putting it into words as i was charlie day-ing over coping skills early on). it's not something that i talk about explicitly in coping skills (and may not since it would be really info dumpy and not vibe with the way i write or characterize the wizards lmao) but it's something ive spent a great deal of time thinking thru for the dang fic and my in-head notes are basically a) in a modern setting like coping skills, the healthcare situation moves at a glacial pace partly because elves live forever so what is a several year wait for a non emergent specialist issue and b) major disabilities, things that impact daily living to a significant degree that cannot be "fixed" with magic, are at best really only tolerated until anamnesis or consecution so the body can be reset into a more perfect form

i could wax poetic about the nitty gritty as it relates to coping skills specifically, but that is like, the base premise of 90% of the fic lmao

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

okay so, heres the thing: with the exception of a few squicks, if something is well written with some fukken *heart* i will eat up just about anything. theres some tropes i don't really get myself and haven't found anything with it that's interested me, like hanahaki, but i have fav fics involving things i notoriously avoid, like kid fic and hs aus. like legitimately, my absolute fav fic is a non explicit hs au, which considering i basically dont read non explicit fics OR hs aus is fucking wild

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

lets see, i did one here for an ashrym fic, and one here for general shadowgast so lets go with a single character, and a delightfully weird song for her

obviously imogen, again, because its funny. do not ask me why spotify recommended this german edm country album to me a bit ago but i listened to the whole thing and it fucking slapped, and this song immediately went on my hells playlist

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

I AM ONLY DOING ONE BECAUSE I DONT TRUST YOU MINA (ilu but also damn many letters lmao)

but callowmoore is just chefs kiss. i don't see anything necessarily romantic between them but i love the idea of the two of them bonding over being absolute gremlins. ashton definitely needs a charismatic wingman and fearne definitely needs someone who has (some level of) smarts re Doing Crimes, so the two of them playing off each other is just delightful and i love how soft they are with each other in cannon and in turn all the fanart (especially the forehead kiss???? im still not normal about that)

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

hmmmmmmmmmmm okay i guess maybe reylo? the rots kiss was absolute garbage rey deserves better BUT i am in theory into her domming the shit out of him but reylo shippers as a whole soured me on the ship and now i just hhhh no thank you, even from authors i trust to write it in a way i'd enjoy :C

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

T answered here! (basically no lmao)

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

homestuck :I like part of it was definitely the Fandom Cycle of falling out if interest with something, especially once there stopped being new cannon i could access but a bigger part of it was seeing all my fav artists and writers in the fandoms, particularly the ones 30+, PARTICULARLY Black artist, being absolutely shat on by kids for the crime of... being adults in fandom spaces basically, or otherwise creating fanworks that featured non-white, non-thin depictions of the characters. i live vicariously thru @/roundandtalented when they spam share hs art because i still love those characters but yeesh ye olde tumblr hs fandom got VERY toxic

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

answered once here with ashton and here with astarion so i guess i gotta keep the train going with "a" name characters

hmmmmmmmmmm

okay lets say abby from ncis (i have watched Many crime procedurals lmao). i imagine she and i would be GREAT fashion buddies, especially when i'm bubblegum pop kawaii to her scary goth. we could swap tips on breaking in big stompy boots and all the best places for cute clothes, and i think we're fairly close in size too so could even SWAP gasp The Dream

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

god i do not know if fandom as a whole has picked up on any of the various things i've built in my fics but tbh i think its absolutely hilarious how i inevitably write a porn/camming au for like every fandom i write multiple fics for. it happens, every single time. EVERY TIME. in fact, mine and cherry's sg camming au started with me lampshading this trend i have, laughing about how FINALLY here was a fandom where i couldn't write camming and make it work, except whoops i thought too hard on it and made it work. this occurred over the course of like..... a single evening. i had the basic outline sketched out within twenty minutes of me being like "theres no way i could write camming into critical role, NO WAY" i am not even exaggerating

so i guess maybe my hilarious contribution to critical role is the contemporary magical setting proof-of-concept???? cherry did say there werent really that many at the time i asked because i lov me some modern aus

there are maybe some letters left idk at this point lmao but here is the meme for those of u who made it thru all that

#mochi rambles #mochi asks #haveievermentioned

[monachopism]

midnights lb

accidentally fucked up listening in order twice so ive heard lavender haze three times already

lavender haze bridge is 💯

maroon is cute but i need to say more later cuz its not live rn

LOVE anti hero

the only thing i don't like so far is that this album is making me listen to lana del ray

but i do love the snow at the beach vibes

this album is like if you took the instrumentation of rep and put it with the themes of 1989 and the lyrics of folklorevermore

currently loving the melody of snow at the beach the bridge is 🙌

immediately getting red vibes from you're on your own kid

ohhh i like this song a lot

def one i will cry to at one point or another

also getting melodrama vibes from the production which makes sense bc jack produced both

DEFINITELY not a knock on either i album love jack antonoff so much i literally flew out to dc to see him a few weeks ago

Midnight Rain giving me big rep vibes

god its all so jack antonoff

i mean hes able to put his spin on all of it its so cool

...Question is lover vibes for sure

i kind of hate that im comparing this to other albums but i think that'll go away with time as i get to know this album better

its so funny bc this album really is like, early hours of the morning / late hours of the night

...question bridge is so good add it to the list of slays

woahhhhh this song. vigilante shit. mark me down as scared and horny

i love this song holy crap

strong contender for album favorite atm

holy fuck that blue note im going feral rn

the smile on my face is like. huge.

bejeweled chorus is so fun i love it.

i love the synths

"i can still make the whole place shimmer" YES YOU CAN BITCH

catch me dancing to this song at 3am

the chorus of this song is so good

ive already heard labyrinth once (during my second fuck up)

mindy project energy

thats literally always a compliment its why i love dress so much

prechorus is the goat

a song i will turn the volume all the way up in my headphones and just experience it

"I thought this plane was going down, how'd you turn it right around?" is one of the most romantic lyrics ever written i do not make the rules

the lorde is strong w this one esp in the production

i can feel this song in my soul god

ive also heard karma already by accident

sounds way better in context than it did when i first listened

its cute

i like the prechorus a lot

definitely one of the sweeter songs on the record

lyrics are so good on this song

its a dancing song for sure

looked ahead and ive listened to mastermind already too by accident

i love the little layered harmony at the end of the bridge that works so well w this song

its about the camp

such a blissfull song

i already love sweet nothings and she hasn't even opened her mouth yet

i love her songs that are like this one, like inthaf

it just makes me want to lay in bed and smile after a magical day

i love the background vocals on this song it fits so well with the mood

the horns ❤️❤️❤️❤️

you know i love me some horns

i cannot wait to have this album on repeat until like february

the lyricism on mastermind is unmatched fr

its giving message in a bottle but with more depth

the hook is just so good

such a great final song

that octave rise of lovers game is so good

this is a screaming song

one i will scream and dance unashamedly to

the inherent romantacism of someone knowing how your brain works

oh my lord i loved that. i need to listen more in order to gather more thoughts but for now i just have this warm feeling in my chest abt this

i really feel like i can die happy having hesrd that

#layenate lb #midnights #taylor swift #oh lord #im having trouble not crying rn

[cryolyst]

.

#i love the knowledge that i shouldn't be in a romantic relationship and realizing all my romantic fantasies won't ever come true #not in a sad self deprecating way. just that im really flawed n have so much work to do on myself before i can ever date. #i mean. im barely maintaining my friendships. my own life is in shambles. i can't open up. can't take care of myself. #have to deal w my depression. gotta fix my bad habits. need to manage the usage of my phone. gotta be better w sleep and hygiene. #im so dependent on my parents and i rely on technology n fandom as a coping mechanism. im self centered. #it might take me a lifetime to deal w all those things #i really don't think i can be w someone in a romantic way until ive dealt with a majority of those issues #or at the very least working on most of those problems #i mean. if im unable to sustain a good healthy n meaningful friendship then... uh #oof but im. not as like. intensely a hopeless romantic as i was before? #like idk if anyone reading this remembers but i used to like. self destruct when someone cute did one (1) nice thing to me. #n i went on and on about whoever i had a crush on that month. id make hundreds of posts about holding their hand or playing with their hair. #and idk why but sometime this summer it stopped? like i still get crushes n get flustered abt ppl being nice #but im not. as intense abt it. might be realizing im not ready/it's not right for me? might be the depression? lmao. #anyways. point is it might've been real devastating if this understanding came to me last year or w/e but im good w it now. #ignore me

[wearequeer-andwearehere]

hi there ryan!

from a questioning person who's had more identity crisis' than they could count😭 -

i'm a girl, and when i was about twelve or thirteen or so, there was this girl i've thought for years i've had a crush on. i really wanted to be close to her and for her to trust me w/ stuff, and i thought she was pretty, and i'd look at her a lot because of it, and i thought sometimes that it'd be nice to kiss her (like, on the lips but with our months closed, i'm ace-)

anyways- i've identified as pan for the longest time but now i'm realizing that i don't think i've had a crush on anyone or ever will? like, that girl was the first person i've felt that way about but i have the same thoughts about other people w/ different gender identities that ive previously thought i've had a crush on before: they're attractive, itd be nice to kiss them

but like. that's all. i only recently even found out that people weren't kidding when they talked about butterflies in their stomach or getting nervous around crushes n stuff. my parents never let me engage w/ any media relating to predominantly to romance and i never really enjoyed engaging w/ it either as i grew up, so i didn't really know what crushing on someone was supposed to feel like, then i looked it up and realized that it doesn't sound like i've ever had a crush? it sounds like i really want to be friends (i have one close-ish friend and i've always struggled making friends and i'm basically perpetually lonely), and i can like envision myself kissing them but now i've realized that i can do that w/ anyone, like i thought it'd be nice to kiss those certain people when i thought about that in regards to them - but i don't know if that qualifies as a crush yk?

i think i might be aroace? maybe mostly ace? because whenever i think of a romantic relationship i just want one where it's a friendship but we kiss on the lips and cuddle sometimes. is that a qpr? a normal friendship? dude idk at this point, i know you're just another teen (i'm 15 - that's too old to never have had a crush on anyone right? like i don't think i will, ever, because the whole concept of it sounds foreign to me, bc i don't think i've ever felt that way but this all hinges on whether or not i have actually felt that way, like, when i think i have had crushes - idk if they were crushes yk - i still cant see myself falling for someone the way my friends do and characters do, so honestly idk) but ive been stressing about this for years and i really have no clue what's going on, maybe you could help v confused me?

Heya there anon :D

You can read this, this, and look through my #aromantic questioning tag if you want!

Hmm yeah that doesn’t really qualify as a crush 

Ayyyo that’s awesome my dude, being aroace is so cool :D

Hmm it’s really whatever you want it to be really, like it sounds like it could be queerplatonic? Maybe do some reading on qprs and altérons attraction see if it sounds familiar!

Fifteen isn’t too old to have never had a crush tbh, there are lots of people who don’t first experience romantic attraction until much older! I’m not saying this to discredit your aromanticism but yeah fifteen isn’t too old at all!!

Hmm yeah mate it sounds like you’re possibly aromantic. I suggest reading the posts I’ve linked above, also following some aro blogs @/arosuggestions is a good place to start!! And reading more about apterous attraction, etc, see if you relate!

Tbh my advice is try on the label, say “Im aro” and see how it feels!!

Hope I could help you out, lmk if you have any more questions and have a great day/night :D

#ask #anon #helping out a questioning person