When asked, Ms. Frizzle denies that she “knows everything”
However, Ms. Frizzle always knows what her students are up to, knows the answer to every question they ask her, and never shows fear even when in extreme mortal peril, as if she’s experienced this all before
Although we know she was in a rock band called the Frizzlettes and was a Shakespearean actress, Ms. Frizzle’s childhood remains mysterious
Ms. Frizzle is EXACTLY the sort of person to travel back in time to teach herself, and is in fact the most likely fictional character to do so
Nobody is ever named “Valerie Frizzle” at birth
Ms. Frizzle dresses queerly and laughs at her own bad jokes
A lot of the series is about Arnold learning to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy – that phrase is more or less targeted at him as a student
Ms. Frizzle looks a lot like a grown-up Arnold
Holy shit???????
She literally has a giant storeroom full of barrels of pickles because she loves pickles so much what more evidence do you need
What relation do pickles have with the transgender community?
One of the medications used in hormone therapy for trans women (spironolactone, which counteracts testosterone) has the side effect of, putting it crudely, making you have to pee all the goddamn time. That causes dehydration and loss of electrolytes.
Pickles and pickle juice turn out to be a fairly convenient and flavorful way of satisfying an electrolyte craving. Those who’ve been on spiro a long time can develop a nigh-spiritual bond with ‘em.
dope
LIZ IS TRANS TOO BC SHE HAS HORNS AND FEMALE JACKSONS CHAMELEONS DONT HAVE HORNS
It’s ya girl, arolace, back at it again with inventing things that relate to being aro. Today’s question is: Are you tired of not being able to see yourself in the media? Well, look no further than this fun game! Help other aros like you discover fun characters that we can actually relate to! All you gotta do is:
1. Write character’s name and what book/movie/tv show they first appeared in
2. (optional) Since this is open to everyone who’s arospec, if you’d like to be more specific about what you headcanon/what is canon, feel free to write it down
3. any other details about the show/book/movie you feel is important
I’ll provide some examples to start it off
Data from Star Trek TNG. I hc him/them as aroace or greyroace and agender/nb, and Star Trek in general is actually a really good show if you’re not to into the romance plots
The Doctor from Doctor Who (specifically doctors 1, 3, 6, 7, war, 12 for aro hc) I think all the doctors are ace, but 1, 3, 6, 7, war, and 12 are super duper aroace. Sixie in particular has the very obvious six/peri QPR. Doctor Who (especially classic doctor who) has some of the most canon QPRs in any show ever. Also the remaining doctors are also pretty easily arospec but I’m too lazy to write them all down right now (later my dudes, later)
Merida from Brave. I mean come on ShE sHoOtS aRrOwS aNd WeArS gReEn AnD hAtEs ThE iDeA oF MaRrIgE. I hc as demiroace because she seems to hate the idea of getting married to some loser she doesn’t know but doesn’t necessarily ever say she wants to be single forever
who do you guys think? Can’t wait to hear your aro hcs!
Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia. I headcanoned him as aroace even before I knew that was a thing. He was the first character I could fully relate to since he clearly loves all his friends and doesn’t seem to be interested in romance. the sequel doesn’t count that game can try to pry my aroace lloyd from my cold dead hands for all i care
Sorey from Tales of Zestiria. Again, an aroace headcanon. Sorry, I just get so excited when I find a character I can actually relate to. Also, Sorey and Mikleo in a queerplatonic relationship is the best thing ever.
Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld Witches books by Terry Pratchett has to be the archetypal autistic-coded non-amorous aro-ace-coded witch woman, at least to my mind. She has that common disconnection from society and its romantic entanglements but she will be there to save it in the end, even if she’s a shade (or a lot) disgruntled by the necessity and there’s nothing soft about her blunt tongue. I personally think her brand of cheerfully living alone combined with her willingness to wade into society’s problems when needed make her a better portrayal of non-amorous aro-ace than Clariel, plus she’s a thousand different types of clever and heroic in a very understated fashion.
(In fact, I feel that the the construct of the role of the Discworld witch and their service to society while living on its edges is very friendly to aromantics. And autistics.)
Granny Weatherwax is in several books, but you can see her as a main character in Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum, and she’s a supporting character in some of the Tiffany Aching books. But … just read all of Discworld, honestly. It’s not romance-free, so I don’t recommend it for folks who are very romance repulsed, but it’s generally not the central focus even in the books where it’s more of a significant presence, and several books are barely or minimally romantic. There’s heaps of characters who don’t have romantic relationships or, if they do, those relationships don’t have significant page-time. I’ll admit that I’m not a fan of Vimes and Sybil’s romantic relationship (which is against the prevailing opinion of many alloromantics I know) but it still doesn’t occupy too much of his stories!
If you like witty, clever fantasy and stories that are concerned with so much more than their characters’ romantic entanglements, Discworld.
Dean Winchester from Supernatural seems very aro to me. He does often have sexual relationships though so any sex repulsed aces should probably avoid this show.
@aroacestuff, Dean Winchester as an allosexual aro has just blown my mind! It makes so much sense about his character, his relationships and the show! So much sense! I mean, it’s not canon in the sense that they come right out and say it, but there’s so much evidence for Dean as an allosexual aro (who doesn’t know he’s aro) that I feel it’s more coding than headcanon. Hell, his trying to have romantic relationships and it never quite working and sticking instead with family and making found-family, and his primary, defining relationships always being platonic or familial–that feels so aro to me. So aro.
(And Dean and Castiel makes so much more sense, in terms of the narrative, as a QPR.
A romantic relationship between them always felt forced,
between the queerbaiting that it might go there and the evident truth that the show was never going to, but a QPR? That fits. It fits the show and it fits Dean. They just don’t know that’s what it’s called.)
I’m still probably never going to make it past Season 11 because I was starting to find the later-later seasons too repetitive (not necessarily in individual episodes but in terms of season narrative arc) for my enjoyment, but I think I will have to rewatch the Supernatural seasons I do have with an eye for allo-aro Dean.
Thank you so much for pointing out just why I’ve always found Dean to be the more relatable of the brothers. Because he’s allo-aro.
Finn from Adventure Time. His obsession with Princess Bubblegum has no sense of depth, and is much more along the lines of “I think you’re really cool…is that what a crush is? Does that mean I like you?”
He has repeatedly told Jake that he’s not interested in going out with girls, and fails to see why Jake thinks Finn would be into dating.
His relationship with Flame Princess had disastrous effects to everyone, and after getting out of that relationship he describes himself as not really being able to feel anything like that. In one episode, Huntress Wizard tells him directly that “exceptional beasts like us cannot fall in love. That is the secret of ordinary people.” It’s evident in the series that that wasn’t just a throwaway line, and it was so important for Finn’s character to be validated by that.
Jean Valjean from Les Mis. I think he’s aroace and that might be why he seemed a lot happier living in the convent than anywhere else and why he seemed so uncomfortable at the wedding. There is a part in the book that says that he had trouble telling that Cosette had a crush on Marius because he had never had one himself. He and Cosette have this really beautiful found-family story that @euphrasievaljean did a lot better job of describing here than I could.
I’m not sure if this would count as romance repulsed. It kind of sounds like something a lot of Aros probably experience. It’s this idea that, “Okay, this person is already in a romantic relationship, cool. We can be friends.” But then if we meet someone who isn’t, and get to know them, and then they get into a romantic relationship with someone later, it kind of causes a slight feeling of betrayal. Not that that person has done anything to earn it, but I think it’s kind of like this connection you feel with them, and then when they find someone, you feel like that connection has been severed to an extent, or you become the third wheel (and that’s not fun for a lot of people). My ex qpp got into a romantic relationship recently and she keeps talking about how she wants me and her boyfriend to get along and how we should all hang out. While I would love to be able to get along with him, if I hang out with both of them at the same time, i’m gonna be the third wheel, and I can’t interact with her like I would when he’s not around, because there’s still some level of intimacy between us. I think it all boils down to the level of closeness you feel with that person, and not necessarily being romance repulsed.
What do our followers think?
~Amber
I’ve found that I experience that sometimes. If a close friend of mine starts a romantic relationship, I find myself feeling somewhat excluded, even though I know I shouldn’t. I think it boils down (for myself, it might be different for others and I don’t want to generalize) to a small fear that all of my alloromantic friends will eventually settle down with others and that I’ll be left alone? It’s a ridiculous fear, and most of the time I can ignore it, but every so often it’ll resurface, especially when new romantic relationships are started with people I know.
I agree and think that it’s a common thing for aros to feel that way when friends start romantic relationships, whatever the reason. Not everyone does, of course, but a decent amount of people I have talked to have noted feeling the same kind of aversion to those new relationships. I also agree that I think a lot of it has to be because of the “third-wheel” status, which the people in the romantic relationship don’t always realize exists.
does anyone have a convincing explanation for why homophobia declined so precipitously
femmenietzsche said: Byproduct of making sex and marriage about individual fulfillment.
that doesn’t really feel sufficient, I mean yes it’s obviously correlated with all kinds of other social change, most of which boost the value of individual lives over traditional institutions, but we’re still going from mental disorder to officially sanctioned love-is-love within 20 years, few other changes seem this fast.
It’s namby pamby liberalism, basically.
You know that black guy who befriended the KKK to get them to give up their robes? Daryl Davis? It turns out bigots actually are reasonably persuadable if you can get in under their defenses. Not to go all Saturday Morning Cartoon very special episode and everything, but the power of empathy and brotherhood is real and just knowing a member of an oppressed group on a personal level makes it hard to keep oppressing them.
And gay people had advantages even Daryl Davis didn’t have. We could and basically had to remain hidden for a long time. Before we came out of the closet, we were sons and daughters, best friends and pupils, the kid on the debate team or the co-worker. The fundamentals of the situation required that the intense personal confessionals and bridge building to bigots happened naturally and on a massive scale. One agonizing conversation with family after another, one difficult decision about whether to hold hands at thanksgiving or invite grandma to the commitment ceremony at a time, we won hearts and minds.
The strategy scaled, and in fact was made easier and easier as time went on. Some people come out, which made it a little safer to come out, which let more people come out, and on and on until everyone had a daughter or a mechanic that they knew was gay.
It baffles me that this is supposed to make me a naive and unsophisticated when most of those same progressives yelling at me about it either were queer themselves or involved in gay activism when all of this as going down. I saw dozens of people go from bigots to grudgingly accepting people to enthusiastic advocates of gay rights, And I’m betting you did, too, so where the current pessimism about converting the bigoted comes from is a mystery to me. Sometimes the spiritually uplifting and optimistic answer happens to be the right one. And the attitude of the modern-day to conversion of bigots strikes me as an intentional decision to stick to comforting and politically easy facts when the truth is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to the past 20 years.
yay for namby pamby liberalism!
I’ve seen people argue that Will and Grace was hugely influential, just because “prime time TV”. You see something weird and scary and unfamiliar, and nothing happens, and you see it again, and nothing happens, and after a while it’s not scary anymore.
But think about the famous judge saying he’s never met a gay person, and his clerk saying “uh, actually”. Back in the 80s, when a kid in my school came out as gay, it was a huge fucking deal. I saw one other kid openly claim to be bisexual, and… like, that was it. That was what we had for anyone talking about being gay or admitting to it or anything.
So that kid came out in his senior speech, and said “you know, people keep saying they think I’m gay, and you know what? Yeah, I am.” And he got a standing ovation. And all the kids at that school got the impression that being gay was something that a cool person you really liked might be doing, and that it was hard on them when people were jerks to them.
And honestly, a big part of the reason it became a massive shift was precisely that homophobia was weaponized as a get-out-the-vote strategy. For a long time before that, the actual degree of active hostility was actually lower in most of the US; people just avoided the topic. So some of this was a result of the realization that this could be used as a topic to motivate people to vote. But that meant making it a major topic. And doing things like pushing for a law banning gay marriage, when no one had seriously been talking about it before that. (Almost no one. I know Quakers whose church was doing same-sex marriages in the late 80s.)
So suddenly it became a major thing people talked about, and it turns out that when it keeps getting talked about, and influential people keep saying “hey, this is… just sorta stupid really”, and stories about kids getting kicked out by their parents are heartbreaking and awful… People just kept moving over, and moving over.
One of my friends decided to come out as a trans girl at school, by showing up at a party in a dress and makeup. No one gave her a hard time about it. We asked.
But we asked “did anyone give you a hard time about it”. Not “was anyone okay with it”. Not “did you get seriously injured.” Because that’s where the question is, now, in most of our culture.
So, yeah, you can absolutely persuade bigots. It’s stunningly effective. And I know someone’s gonna jump in with “well, it wouldn’t work on the KKK”, but obviously it does; Daryl Davis has proven that.
And someone’s gonna say “okay, but it wouldn’t work on Aryan Brotherhood people”, but actually it can and does. One guy talked to reporters about it a fair bit; he went to jail, ended up with the Aryan Brotherhood, hated Jews, and all that. Got out, got a job working for a guy who was Jewish, was just dreading the Jewish guy stiffing him on his salary. First paycheck rolled around, guy gave him a bonus and said “you’re a really hard worker, you deserve this bonus, thanks for being a good worker.” Boom. Loyalty to Aryan Brotherhood: Gone. They lied to him and he knows it.
And someone’s gonna say “but it wouldn’t work on someone involved with Stormfront”, but it turns out the kid of the guy who founded Stormfront, who was active in promoting Stormfront, ended up getting outed at school, so some of the Jewish kids said “hey, let’s invite him to dinner since no one else will talk to him”, and now he’s actively speaking against white nationalism.
It’s not just that it works. It’s that it works extremely well, and most of the competing strategies backfire more than they work.
i think a lot of the panicky-hostile reaction against the idea of talking to bigots comes from people thinking “it works” means “you personally have to do it instead of any other thing” and they freak out because they don’t feel confident they can have a civil conversation with a douchebag without becoming a doormat.
folks, it’s fine if you’re not the one to do that. it takes social skills, luck, and guts. it also takes a lot of focus, so even if you have the ability you might not have the time/attention/energy.
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 